


The Estate

by vinnie2757



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Edwardian Period, Explicit Language, F/M, cid as played by max irons channelling dan stevens, cid gets the dokis and doesnt know what to do, i love making cid a titled man because he doesnt suit it at all but he absolutely does, im a sucker for a period piece, its basically downton but in rocket town lmao, non graphic injury, potentially explicit sexual content we'll see how it goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27289345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: Desperate to flee a dinner party at which her parents expect her to get along with her suitor well enough to confirm the match, Shera jumps a gate that is always locked and trespasses into the woods owned by Lord Highwind, Earl of Rakheim.She doesn't, naturally, expect to get lost nor injured, but Fate smiles upon her to let Lord Highwind rescue her and allow her to recuperate at the estate.[edwardian au with a hint of beauty and the beast]
Relationships: Cid Highwind/Shera
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	1. The Woods

**Author's Note:**

> listen right, i am a sucker for period pieces, and im even more of a sucker for downton.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

If you’d asked her twenty minutes ago, Shera would not have described herself as an impulsive creature. A little foolhardy, for certain, and very easily distracted, but not impulsive. She doesn’t make decisions on a whim, on the spin of a gil and the faintest of notions.

At least, she didn’t, until twenty minutes ago, when her parents had been distracted, in deep conversation with one of the visiting dignitaries about some new medical advancement or another, and her suitor – for whom she would likely not forgive her parents for a good many weeks! – had turned away at the call of his name, some friend or another from some gentleman’s club. There, she had taken the opportunity and slipped into the crowd and out the other side, towards the doors. Nobody had seen her, which was a miracle in itself, given the monstrosity of a dress her mother had forced her into, ill-fitted and lemon yellow and generally very awful, even if it was in fashion. She isn’t convinced by the black netting or the swell of fabric around her hips, but her mother had insisted it was very becoming, and she itches to take the pins out of her hair.

She’s not sure where she wants to go, once she’s outside. The initial instinct is, understandably, to go home. This makes the most sense; she can take off the dress and the pins from her hair and the corset and relieve herself of all cumbersome things. She can make tea, or ask cook if she’s still in the kitchen, and she can put on her nightgown, and read a book, and just. Forget that this whole nightmare had happened to her.

So why, then, do her feet lead her to the gate, locked on the far side of the green? Why does she glance back to see if anybody has followed her, and when she sees that her coast is clear, why does she hike her skirt and clamber over the gate? The gate is always locked, and has been for most of her life; rumour has it that the lord of the estate to which the path belongs, for it leads into a woods owned by one of the oldest families in the area, would shoot anyone caught trespassing, and other rumours declared the woods haunted, that whispers in the darkness would lead you astray, into a bog from which you would be unable to escape. But she doesn’t think that far ahead, doesn’t even consider any truth to the rumours – she knows well enough that ghosts do not exist, and it was more likely drunkenness leading people to their deaths – just gets herself over the gate and onto the path.

She only really intends to walk for a little while, just to clear her head, to give herself time away from the cloying air of the dance hall, from the amorous intentions of the supposed suitor, but she finds, after only minutes, that she cannot see the way back. The path has forked in several directions, and she doesn’t quite remember which forks she took to find her way back.

‘Oh,’ she says aloud to herself, and then under her breath, ‘ _fuck_.’

Her mother would wash her mouth out to hear her say it, and truth be told she feels dirty for having said it, but sometimes that was just the language that you had to use, and she feels alone enough to not be judged for it.

She yanks awkwardly at the black, flowered belt around her middle and yanks it free, and pulls at her gloves, popping the buttons at her wrists, and the little things disappear into the mist around her ankles. She’ll never see them again, but she doesn’t care particularly. She thinks about it for a moment, and figures that her mother would rather see her stockings ruined than her shoes and stoops as much as she can to pull them off. The bare earth is cold beneath her feet, damp and soft and she wonders whether there are any insects. She doesn’t mean to tread on them if there are, but there’s very little visibility here, and even less light.

‘Right,’ she says aloud again, and realises, belatedly, that she has no idea how long she’s been here.

There’s no moon to light her way, and no signposts on the path, so she picks a direction and heads in that direction. Some twenty minutes later, she has even less idea where she is than she had before, and she’s torn her dress in at least three places, and her hair had gotten so caught on a low-hanging branch she’s surprised she hadn’t gained a bald patch.

A crack of a twig, and she leaps a mile. She should be expecting noises in the forest; it’s dark and there are animals that live here. But it’s the first noise she’s heard in some time that she hasn’t made, and it startles her.

‘Hello?’ she asks, but gets no reply.

Of course not. What a stupid thing to think.

Her parents must have noticed her absence now, and must be wondering where she’d gone. Would they go home first? That’s where she should have gone, and she wishes she’d gone there instead of this impulsive, stupid decision to go into a gated-off woods.

There’s a reason Lord Highwind doesn’t want people in the woods, and it’s probably because they’re all stupid enough to get themselves lost and hurt and they’d be lucky to not die.

Huffing out a breath, she scrapes loose hair back off her temples and tries to find the path, but the mist has closed in thicker now, and she can barely see her feet, never mind the direction of the path.

‘Oh, woe,’ she sighs, and continues onwards.

Another ten minutes of walking, and she catches her foot on a fallen log she cannot see through the fog. Well, no, she catches her dress, and then catches her foot trying to free her dress, and she topples. With a crash, and a bang, and a cry, she hits the earth and the impact shakes through her with such an intensity she’s surprised she hasn’t broken something. Her corset could have certainly caused some damage and it takes her several moments to right herself, tearing her dress even more in her attempts. Out of breath, sore, and a little bit scared, she yanks her dress free, feels the tear come almost all the way up to her armpit and promptly bursts into tears.

As a rule, Shera does not generally cry. Her mother had told her several times that she hadn’t cried much as a baby either, but right now Shera thinks crying will help. It won’t solve anything, but it’ll get the emotion out of her system, and give her something else to think about besides the fact that she’s lost, cold, tired and scared.

Her dress is in tatters, her stockings torn, her hair tangled with leaves and twigs and everything soaked in mud. She’s bruised, no doubt, and grazed where the branches and twigs and nettles have gotten to her. She lost both gloves and her belt, but has managed to hold onto one shoe.

A sorry state, to be sure. She must look like a bog creature.

To think, her mother had thought her wife material not a few hours ago.

When she’s done crying, for she doesn’t cry for very long, she picks herself up, dusts herself down as best she can given the circumstances, and tries to find her way. She doesn’t get very far when she hears more noise in the trees, a heavy panting, familiar.

It takes a second before she realises it’s canine. Oh, she thinks, panic swelling so tight in her chest she thinks her corset is suffocating her, she didn’t know there were wolves in the woods. Nobody had said anything about _wolves_. She knows they’re around, on the other side of the mountains, but nobody said they were this close to people, to civilisation. Frantically, she tries to remember what the advice is. Does she stay still, does she run, does she make herself big or small? She can’t remember, and she’s terrified that the uncertainty will get her killed.

A rustle of leaves, a snap of a branch, and then out of nowhere, a canine leaps from the trees and barrels into her, barking. Barking! It’s a dog! Wolves don’t bark, she realises, even as she’s sent sprawling flat on her back, wind knocked out of her and a good seventy pound of slobbering, tail-wagging, barking mutt on her chest, wolves don’t bark!

‘Good dog,’ she wheezes, as much as she can, and tries to pat the creature, but it’s too excitable, and doesn’t stay still long enough for her to get a hand on it. ‘Down, girl.’

It barks again, loud as it likes, and clambers off, sitting beside her, tail a rhythmic thump on the ground. Shera lies there for another few moments, heaving for breath, before finally pulling herself upright. In the mist and the darkness, it’s hard to make out the breed, but its eyes are very, very blue, and there’s some white on its fur, picked out by the thinnest shred of moonlight filtering through the trees overhead.

‘Dragon?’ calls a voice. A man’s voice, unrefined and yet with power.

Without having heard it before, or having had it described to her, she knows it’s Lord Highwind.

The temptation to swear is almost too strong.

At the sound of what she assumes is the dog’s name, the dog leaps up, barks again, tail wagging enough to waft the air past Shera’s face. In its eagerness to respond, it puts its front paws on her legs and must be putting all its weight on them, because Shera finds herself trapped.

‘Ouch,’ she says, though she knows the dog doesn’t understand.

A moment or two passes, and then a figure crashes through the same space the dog did, though thankfully without crashing into her too. She doesn’t think she could take the weight of a full-grown man and a dog.

It’s a little late to be dressed for hunting, but the figure is in the unmistakable silhouette of a hacking jacket and long boots, flat cap atop his head.

‘’Ere,’ he says, in a way that she would never have supposed an Earl to speak, ‘the fuck you doin’ down there?’

Shera, sat on her backend in a torn dress, looking every bit as bedraggled and tattered as one would expect for a girl that had gone trampling through a locked-off woods in the middle of a spring night, blinks up at him.

‘Pardon?’ she replies.

Lord Highwind clambers over a log or two, and the grace with which he steps onto and then off a log that shifts under his weight is impossibly beautiful and easy, and he comes to stand in front of her, going so far as to squat so that they can actually look at each other and not just guess at each other’s silhouette through the mist. He’s got incredibly blue eyes, and the shadow of the day’s stubble on his jaw, and he’s – Shera has never actually seen him before, but he’s beautiful, in a raw sort of way. Masculine without being threatening, strong without being overpowering, with cheekbones that a girl would try to create with powder, and an intelligence in his gaze that softened to something entirely different when he really saw the state of her.

‘You look like you’ve had a fun time,’ he grins, and abruptly stands again.

‘I got lost,’ she offers, and clasps her elbows, though her crossed arms don’t really do a lot to hide the tatters of her gown, and the split in the skirt that reveals the top of her stockings. The dog is still on her leg, pinning half the dress down.

‘Lost,’ Lord Highwind snorts and shakes his head as he undoes the buttons of his jacket, shrugging out of it. ‘Dragon, heel. Let the poor gal up.’

The dog – Dragon, it seems, though it is a strange name for a dog – does as bid immediately, falling in beside her master and sitting on his heel with a thumping tail and lolling tongue.

‘’Ere,’ Lord Highwind says, and thrusts the jacket out to her. ‘It’s getting cold, and you ain’t really dressed to be out here. Can you stand?’

Shera stares at him. He shakes the jacket insistently. Mouth opening, but no words coming out, she takes the jacket and holds it in dirty hands.

‘I don’t know,’ she admits.

‘Put the jacket on,’ he instructs with a jerk of his chin, ‘and give me your hand, we’ll soon find out, eh?’

Shera hesitates, but his eyes are so bright, so patient, that she does as bid, and his hand is warm in hers, without gloves and callused on the palm. She didn’t expect him to have calluses, because why would an Earl do any sort of work that required labour enough to form calluses? His grip is strong, and he pulls with very little effort. As her weight goes onto her feet, one ankle gives beneath her, and she stumbles, but he’s there to catch her, his grip tight but not restrictive.

‘My ankle,’ she says, and grips his arms to try and get some balance.

‘What the fuck were you doin’?’ he asks, adjusts his grip so he’s not clutching her armpits anymore, braces her elbows instead.

Her weight safely on one foot, she blinks at him. She’s not that much shorter than him, but it’s enough that she has to look up. They’re close for being half an arm away, and she hadn’t been this close to the suitor her mother had chosen.

‘Oh,’ she says, and looks at her feet, half-hidden behind the mist and black as night with mud. ‘I was at a party.’

‘Some fuckin’ party,’ he snorts, and studies her face. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to – fuck, the estate’s closest. Do you think you can walk?’

She stares at him.

‘Walk,’ he repeats, with some note of impatience. ‘Can you?’

She tries it, but as soon as her weight goes onto her ankle, it buckles. He catches her again, shifts his grip before she has chance to protest, and sweeps her into his arms.

‘Sir,’ she exclaims, ‘your clothes!’

He snorts, and assures her that he’s done to worse to them himself than get them muddy from rescuing a damsel.

‘I am not a damsel,’ she protests.

‘You just admitted you got lost. Dragon, follow.’

The dog plods along behind them, close enough that she can see it over his shoulder as he walks, and the sensation of his climbing over logs is odd, discomforting. She feels as if he’s about to drop her, or fall, or some malady will occur. But he walks as though he could do it blindfolded, and she finds herself studying him and the landscape.

‘Why did you come this way?’ he asks, quietly.

For a moment, she doesn’t reply, and he opens his mouth to repeat himself, but she shakes her head.

‘I don’t know,’ she admits. ‘I suppose I – I don’t know. I wanted to get away. If I went home, I would – I just wanted to get away. I’ve never done something so impulsive before.’

He snorts. ‘I’ll fuckin’ say. You come out here after rain in a fuckin’ evening gown and expect to make it through in the dark? Fuckin’ hell, girl, half the gentleman’s club can’t do that shit in broad daylight on a summer’s day.’

‘I thought the gate was always locked.’

‘We go through the estate,’ he shrugs.

She considers this for a moment.

‘Why is the gate locked?’ she asks.

‘For the very fuckin’ reason I’m carrying you right now. Fuckin’ idiots think they can get through the woods, dare each other to do it. To be quite _fucking_ honest with you, two bodies has been enough for me to find.’

‘Two bodies,’ she repeats, under her breath. Her fingers knot, slick with mud and cracking in the knuckles.

‘Doesn’t really matter,’ he says, ‘idiots’ll find their way in when they want to escape something else.’

It’s a very pointed jab at her, and she accepts it; it was a terribly stupid thing to do.

‘I’m very grateful you were out,’ she murmurs. ‘I don’t know how long I was lost for.’

‘It’s nearly two,’ he tells her.

‘Two?’ she exclaims, louder than she means to, and his fingernails dig into a tear in her stocking. ‘I left the party not long after ten!’

He laughs, loud and full and not entirely cruelly.

‘The woods have a way of doin’ that to you. We’re nearly at the house, one of the maids’ll be up to make you up a bath.’

‘No,’ she says, immediately.

He blinks, confusion audible.

‘What?’ he asks.

‘I should go home. My parents will be worried about me.’

‘You can’t go home.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re a fuckin’ state, and your ankle’s fucked. Just have a bath and let my housekeeper take a look, she’s good with shit like that.’

‘Your language is atrocious, sir.’

‘Born and bred,’ he replies, which makes no sense.

She’s still puzzling over this curious response when Dragon abruptly takes off ahead of them and the woods part to reveal the Highwind estate, a grand, sprawling building, greenery growing up the walls and courtyard untamed. It’s beautiful in the moonlight, and the front doors are open, light spilling out across the steps.

‘Oh good,’ Lord Highwind says, ‘someone noticed I was late back, that’s good of them.’

Shera makes a noise of incredulity in the back of her throat.

‘I’m taking the piss,’ he snorts. ‘I couldn’t ask for better staff.’

The man awaiting them at the door is bigger than Lord Highwind and Shera put together, and looks simultaneously shocked and unphased at their arrival. By his livery, he’s the butler, and Shera is in awe of the breadth of his shoulders beneath his coat. Dragon sits patiently at his heels, obviously having shot up as soon as she saw the door was open.

‘Wright,’ Lord Highwind says, ‘wake one of the maids, if there ain’t one up, this one needs a bath and a change of clothes.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Wright nods, and off he stomps, which Shera is sure he doesn’t mean to do, he’s simply so large that he can’t avoid it.

‘I have no idea what his wife feeds him,’ Lord Highwind says, and stands there holding Shera like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

A maid appears some moments later and does a double-take at the Earl holding a scrap of a girl in his arms, covered in mud and dressed in tatters.

‘She needs a bath,’ he instructs, ‘I thought perhaps the Wutai Bedroom might be the best, if you could light the fire, too.’

She bows her head and rushes off up the stairs.

‘My Lord,’ Shera tries, ‘you don’t need to go to all the hassle.’

‘I’m afraid I’ll only have maid’s clothes available,’ he says, ‘unless they happen to find something else. Fuck knows where they’d find it, I haven’t had a gal stay here in years.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Shera says, automatically.

‘The fuck you apologising for? My mother was doing her best to make an honest man of me, and to be fuckin’ honest, I’ve got more important things than gettin’ married to be getting on with. Ah, here she is.’

The maid has returned, this time with an older lady in tow, who has linen and lace over her arm. She’s a matronly sort, and the keys on her belt denote her as the housekeeper. She’s got a friendly face, her hair in a neat bun on the back of her head, and her apron is only barely creased; obviously slung on in a hurry, but not without care. She nods to the maid, who scurries off up the stairs again, and then looks at Lord Highwind and then at Shera with a raised eyebrow.

‘Got our work cut out for us this evening, I see,’ she says.

‘Mrs Wright,’ Lord Highwind replies, wryly.

‘Jo tells me we’re to put her in the Wutai Room?’

Lord Highwind nods, and says, ‘yes. I need you to look at her ankle when she’s clean, she can’t stand on it.’

‘She is right here,’ Shera grumbles, under her breath, before she can help herself.

Mrs Wright – and now the name has sunk in, and Shera wonders if perhaps she is married to Wright, the butler, which is an unusual prospect, from what she understands of the working of the big house; their own maids were sweet things but spinsters all of them – almost smiles, but keeps her expression level enough for Lord Highwind’s raised eyebrow.

‘My Lord,’ she says, and turns to head up the stairs.

This time, Lord Highwind follows. His gait up the stairs is far smoother than Shera would have thought possible, and the dog follows at his heel. Behind them, Wright stomps about, and the doors swing shut.

Lord Highwind turns at the top of the stairs to head down one wing, and Shera feels she should be paying more attention to her surroundings, but exhaustion is creeping behind her eyes and she’s cold and damp, and she thinks that perhaps a bath might not be so bad.

‘The Wutai Bedroom has the nicest fire of the guest rooms,’ Lord Highwind tells her, and it takes her a moment to realise he’s speaking.

‘Oh,’ she replies, ‘thank you.’

The maid has lit a fire and the room is subsequently warm. A chair waits beside it, and through an open door, she can see the tiles of a bathroom, lit by a candle or two. Lord Highwind deposits her in the chair despite her protests about the mud and informs the maid that she cannot walk.

‘I’ll have tea brought up,’ he tells Shera, and promptly backs out of the room and shuts the door.

Shera is not quite sure what to make of this.

‘Miss,’ Mrs Wright says, gently enough, placing the linen and lace on the end of the bed, ‘as you cannot walk, we can help you.’

Shera, on a day-to-day basis, is able to do her own corset, though tonight their maid had done it for her. She weighs her options, and takes the hands offered to her. Getting her undressed is a painful process, but the maid holding her hands is strong, and between the three of them, they get Shera down to her chemise, giving her some modesty, and Mrs Wright touches her hair.

‘We’ll tackle this in the bath,’ she announces, decided.

Shera does not feel like arguing.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ the maid holding her hands agrees, and passes Shera across.

Shera doesn’t really feel like tea, just a lie down, but perhaps there might be some biscuits or cakes accompanying it, and she feels hungrier than she does thirsty.

‘Is it truly two?’ she asks, as they make their way to the bathroom, where the tub is full of steam and clean-smelling.

‘Yes, Miss,’ Mrs Wright replies, ‘do you think you can get into the tub, or will you need help?’

Shera lets go of the housekeeper’s hands to clutch at the edge of the tub. She will have to remove her chemise, but given the state of the rest of her, she doesn’t think a wet hem will make all the difference. Best to get into the tub first.

‘I think I can manage,’ she says, and almost breaks her neck falling into it.

Mrs Wright stifles a noise that might have been a laugh, and helps Shera orientate herself in the bath, and between them, they peel her out of her chemise, leaving her naked and with tangled hair.

‘Relax,’ Mrs Wright says, and drags a stool over to the back of the tub, where she takes a seat and rests her hands on Shera’s temples. ‘It will take me a minute to undo your hair.’

Shera tries not to wince when the pins snag. Mrs Wright does not apologise, but she does make a noise of sympathy at a particularly nasty tangle, teasing it apart as gently as she can.

‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ the housekeeper hums after a few minutes, during which Shera has relaxed enough to rest her neck more easily against the lip of the tub and wriggle her toes in the water, ‘what were you doing that Lord Highwind happened across you in such a state?’

Shera flushes, and picks at her fingernails.

‘I was, at a dinner party,’ she says, ‘we’d eaten, and had retired to the games room. My – my parents had – there was a suitor.’

At this, Mrs Wright does snort, and it is so unbecoming of a housekeeper that Shera flinches. Mrs Wright takes it for pain at a tangle, and hushes her.

‘So this suitor,’ she says, ‘he was not suitable?’

‘He’s not unsuitable,’ Shera hedges. ‘I just – I don’t think he’s the suitor for me. I took the opportunity to leave the house, and I – it was a foolish thing to do, stupid, even. I climbed the gate to the woods and now here I am. I am very grateful that Lord Highwind found me, I don’t know that I would have found my own way.’

She feels Mrs Wright nod behind her, and the last pin comes free, loosing Shera’s hair down her neck in mud-damp, twig-tangled clumps.

‘The woods have a way, particularly in the evenings,’ she says, ‘the mist comes in and hides the paths, makes it very hard to travel safely.’

Shera nods, and they fall silent. A few moments pass, and then Mrs Wright moves around the tub to get the soap and a cloth.

‘I’ll just go,’ she starts, but the door bangs open and a tea tray appears in the doorway.

It’s Lord Highwind, against all common sense, presenting her with tea.

‘Cid!’ Mrs Wright barks, which is even more against sense and decorum and protocol than anything Shera has ever heard, and Lord Highwind realises what he’s doing as she does.

‘Oh fuck!’ he yelps, and nearly throws the tea at the housekeeper in his haste to get back out of the bathroom.

Struck dumb, Shera hears him clatter down the hall, swearing up a storm, and it is at such odds with the impossible grace he had had in the woods that she finds a laugh bubbling in her chest, breaking free before she can stifle it.

‘A madhouse,’ Mrs Wright mutters, putting the tea tray on the side before turning back to Shera. ‘Come on, we’d best get you cleaned so that I can check your ankle.’

Shera nods, and turns her attention to cleaning her skin while Mrs Wright works on her hair. Brushing it out is going to be a pain, and she’s sure that as housekeeper, she has better things to be doing, but she’s grateful for the help. It’s been many years since someone else washed her hair, and while she can’t say she remembers it fondly, Mrs Wright has gentle, firm fingertips, rubbing at all the sore spots on her scalp and sending tendrils of warm calm down her spine, into her own fingertips, all the way to her toes and back up the other way.

The water is cool by the time she leaves it, but she’s clean at least, and Mrs Wright helps her balance to dry herself off. All modesty is gone now, but the robe that the housekeeper presents her with is luxuriously soft, chiffon and lace with silk trim on wide, draping sleeves and loose, flowing collar, a train of all things! Her nightgown at home is ruffles and cotton and modest. This makes her feel like a Lady – a Princess, someone of importance. Balancing on one foot as she waits for Mrs Wright to content herself with the position of the chair in front of the fire, she swishes the robe a little. It makes a pleasingly soft noise as it moves across the rug.

‘This is a wonderful robe,’ she says, and Mrs Wright nods.

‘I’d worried it might never be worn,’ she admits, and Shera frowns at the back of her head.

‘What do you mean?’

The question is only answered with a curious hum, a blatant dismissal by way of feigned ignorance, and Shera accepts it, because she knows she has no choice, and hobbles to the chair. It’s comfortable enough that if she didn’t have a brush yanking at her tangles she’d be sure to fall asleep, but it’s nice enough for drinking tea and eating biscuits, baked not even a whole day ago, she’s sure. They’re very nice, and she demolishes the plate of them before Mrs Wright has finished with her hair.

‘I’ll put it into plaits,’ Mrs Wright says, ‘and we will worry more about it in the morning.’

‘The morning.’ Shera repeats, and then startles. ‘My parents! They will be wondering where I am! Oh, I should go home, it isn’t far, they must be worried.’

Mrs Wright tuts.

‘You are in no position to go home,’ she says, ‘you would do more damage to your ankle, and that is to say nothing of the darkness out there. No, it is best you leave in the morning.’

Shera wants to argue, but she knows it’s the logical answer, the right answer. Best to go in the daylight, where perhaps they might have a motorcar she can be taken in, or even a chocobo, though she isn’t sure she could ride with two good ankles, never mind one injured one.

It sits wrong that her parents will not know where she is, and Mrs Wright must know this, for she pats Shera’s shoulder as she ties off the plait with a silk ribbon.

‘I’ll have Mr Wright pen a note,’ she says, ‘when I return downstairs. He’ll have it sent out with one of the footmen, and it’ll be with them in the hour.’

Shera nods, and puts the teacup down.

‘Is there anything else you need?’ Mrs Wright asks, ‘you look like you’re ready to sleep, and I think perhaps I’d best leave you to it.’

Shera blinks slowly, and the exhaustion hits her like a wave, the tide coming in thick and fast, sand on her lashes.

‘No,’ she says, slowly, ‘no, I think I just need to sleep.’

‘I’ll look at your ankle,’ Mrs Wright says, moving to kneel next to Shera’s feet, ‘and help you to bed.’

Shera yawns, and struggles to care enough to stifle it. She yelps when Mrs Wright moves her ankle one way and then the other.

‘It’s a sprain,’ she says, ‘we’ll elevate it while you sleep, and it should not take long to heal.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Shera asks, and Mrs Wright laughs, takes Shera’s hands to help her up.

‘Not a chance.’

Once Shera is in bed, and realising, as Mrs Wright extinguishes the lamps, that she has barely paid the room any heed at all, she tries to look around at her surroundings. The bed is comfortable, and too big for her by herself, with plush bedding, silk and cotton and weighted enough to cocoon her without suffocating, a canopy above her head. The rug is pretty, the walls decorated with delicate, beautiful paper depicting scenes she can no longer make out. A big window, the curtains drawn to block out the light and keep in the warmth, a desk and a chair, a dresser. She will look more closely in the morning, she thinks, and it is the last thought before sleep takes her at last.


	2. Tea and Toast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shera wakes, and meets Lord Highwind properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> language as always. some small amount of non-explicit nudity. awful aWFUL flirting
> 
> Enjoy my lovelies~!

Shera wakes to a weight next to her, a heavy breathing, a warmth she cannot place, a smell she knows but can’t name. Her head is aching, her eyes sore before she’s even opened them, and she lies there for several moments before the bed feels too wrong, the birdsong too loud, the bustle of the house too insistent. She’s not in her bed, and the pain in her ankle outweighs everything.

Yelping, she tries to jerk her leg up to grab at her ankle, but only manages to dislodge the weight next to her, which barks.

Barks?

The world slams back into her and her eyes finally focus, showing her Dragon sprawled out next to her, looking both confused and content, judging by the wagging tail.

Shera lies there cradling her ankle, fiercely aware that beneath the covers she is naked, for she’d had no clothes to change into besides the robe. Casting a look at the dog sprawled atop the bed – an act for which she is sure the dog will be punished – she slides out of the open side of the bed and test her ankle. It’s swollen, and she has to clutch at the frame of the bed to support herself, her weight too much, slight though she is. The robe is at the end of the bed, and she wriggles into it, sits to tie it tight about her waist. The silken edges are still as luxurious as they’d been, and in the daylight coming through the now-opened curtains – when had they opened? She wouldn’t have gotten over there to open them herself in the night, and she’d not heard anyone come in – she can see the pattern of the lace, leaves and geometric flowers, in that way they were big a few years ago. And still are, she supposes, though she doesn’t pay much attention to the workings of the fashionable world.

The door rattles and opens, and a pretty little maid enters, tea on a tray.

‘Oh,’ she says, and bobs her ankle into a small curtsey. ‘Good morning, Miss. I brought tea for you.’

Shera blinks at her, and the maid blinks back.

‘Tea, Miss,’ she repeats, gently, and Shera blinks some more.

‘Thank you?’ she tries, and the maid’s mouth twitches, something like humour in her eyes.

‘The Countess has her tea in bed,’ the maid offers, helpfully, and Shera understands what she was doing wrong.

‘Oh,’ she says, and looks at the bed, where Dragon is still lounging as though she owns it, and then at the chair by the fire. ‘I – I would like to have tea by the window. If that’s – if you can help me with the chair.’

The maid looks at her, hovering on her good ankle, the toes of her other barely brushing the carpet, swollen and blackened, and then she nods, puts the tea on the nearest stable surface.

‘I’ll move the chair, Miss,’ the maid says and does just that, before coming back to help Shera hobble across the room and nearly doing them both in with the train of the robe.

‘This is a glorious thing,’ she says as she sits, tucking the excess fabric under the chair and behind her elbows, ‘but it is so extravagant, it’s a wonder it hasn’t done someone harm.’

The maid looks like she wants to say something, make a quip perhaps, but she refrains, and fetches the tea across. There are, to Shera’s delight, more of those little biscuits she’d wolfed down last night. The thought makes her belly rumble; how long has it been since she ate dinner? She glances at the sun, but it’s not visible, the other side of the house.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nine, Miss,’ the maid says, and then, ‘would you like some toast in here, or should I ask about you accompanying my Lord and Lady for breakfast?’

‘Lady?’ Shera asks.

‘Lord Highwind’s mother, Miss.’

‘Oh. Uh. I don’t know if I could manage the stairs, and I haven’t – I haven’t anything else to wear.’

The maid nods, as if realising that herself, and curtseys again.

‘I’ll tell Cook to make you some toast, then, Miss. And I’ll let Mrs Wright know you’re awake, she asked to be told, so she can see your ankle again.’

Shera looks at it as she helps herself to a biscuit. It doesn’t look very nice. She supposes she needs it raised and tries her best to cross her legs in a way that lifts her ankle without disturbing the robe too much.

The door clicks shut, and she’s alone again. Dragon comes to sit by her feet with a lolling tongue and bright eyes. She’s a very pretty dog, mottled grey and black across her back and head, with a white face and belly, patches of gold across her head and legs, her coat thick and long without being shaggy, and of a good shape. Shera does not know what the breed is, but she supposes it is something well-bred and of the kind that only a Lord might choose as a pet.

Together, they look out of the window, and Shera drinks her tea, feeds the dog a biscuit. The grounds are unkempt for the most part, but the gardener is out there in the one patch that looks under control, pruning some hedges and talking to a young woman in a very pretty-looking pink dress. Shera can’t really make out much more than the colour of her dress, but it’s a pleasant sort of shade, and the gardener seems happy enough to be talking to her. The woman is waving a parasol in the direction of the untamed part of the garden when the door clicks open.

‘Miss?’ comes the maid’s voice, and Shera flinches, turns to look.

The maid is there, Mrs Wright at her elbow. Shera nods, adjusts the drape of the robe as though she had anything Mrs Wright hadn’t already literally seen, and sets the tea down.

‘Good morning,’ she says, and Mrs Wright ushers the maid along. She has a small case of what Shera supposes are bandages and tinctures in her hand, and she closes the door behind her before moving to where Shera sits and setting the box down. She drags a stool closer, and sits on it, pulling Shera’s ankle into her lap.

‘You slept well?’ Mrs Wright asks, fingers brushing the bruised and swollen skin.

‘Yes, thank you. I should give my thanks to Lord Highwind, for allowing me to stay.’

‘He’ll be about in time, soon as he realises she’s not on his heels,’ Mrs Wright says, nodding at the dog lay at Shera’s feet.

At the mention of her master, Dragon raises her head off her paws, but when neither he nor treats appear, she drops her head again with a huff. Mrs Wright smiles, and Shera stretches down to scratch behind her ears.

‘Did you – did you write to my parents?’ Shera asks, and Mrs Wright nods.

‘I had Mr Wright send a letter with one of the footmen,’ she says, ‘it’ll have gotten there not an hour after I said goodnight to you.’

Shera looks at the window as Mrs Wright turns her ankle one way then the other. The morning is well and truly underway, and her parents have always been early risers. She doesn’t know whether to worry that they haven’t arrived yet. Do they think it unfashionable to be on the doorstep so early? Are they cross with her for having left the dinner party in such a fashion? For jumping the gate and trespassing onto the Earl’s estate? Are they terribly disappointed that she’s gotten herself injured, and thereby prevailed upon the Earl for care and attention? But surely if they were so mortified, they should be here to whisk her away and out of poor Lord Highwind’s trouble?

‘You need to rest this,’ Mrs Wright says, and Shera flinches.

The housekeeper is wrapping a bandage tightly about the swollen joint, and if Shera had had half a mind to herself last night, she would have insisted upon it after her bath. The daughter of a doctor, and she didn’t think to provide herself basic care. No wonder they’ve left her here, she’s an embarrassment.

‘I should go home,’ she says, and Mrs Wright hums.

‘I will bring you breakfast,’ she says, ‘and then I will track down Lord Highwind, and see what he says.’

Shera understands that she is a guest, and therefore deference to the Earl’s opinion is required, but it doesn’t sit well with her; she wants to go home, and not bother Lord Highwind any further. But there is a set to Mrs Wright’s face that suggests that her mind is made up and that Lord Highwind will be consulted. No doubt he’d said something to her after she left their guest.

‘I understand,’ she says, and Mrs Wright’s face creases in confusion for a moment, barely more than a wrinkle of her nose, but enough that Shera can see it.

With a nod, Mrs Wright gets to her feet and repeats the promise of breakfast, leaves her alone once again.

Shera feeds the dog another biscuit and turns her attention back out of the window.

This time, she is only alone for a few moments before there is another knock and the door opens. A woman Shera does not know stands there, barely poking her head through the gap. Older, not that far off Shera’s mother’s age, with greying temples swept back into a neat, blonde bun, her feature jovial enough and her eyes very, very blue. She hasn’t changed much since Shera was a child, seeing her about town in that way she always seemed to not care about the propriety of being alone in town.

‘My Lady,’ Shera says, and goes to scramble to her feet, because that’s what you do, and trips over the robe, which is trapped underneath Dragon, falls back into the chair with a thump.

Lady Highwind, Countess Rakheim herself, just laughs, and pushes the door all the way open, strolling in with a maid carrying a tray behind her. She walks with a cane, but doesn’t seem to need it, and Shera suspects it is simply for the possibility of stabbing it on the tiles for effect. Her dress is demure, sensible, a high neck of lace and taupe cotton, comfortable for the chill lingering in the air without being too cosy, but it’s simplicity doesn’t detract from the beautiful embroidery at the hems, or the elegant jewellery on her fingers and in her ears.

‘Please,’ the Countess says, waving a hand to insist Shera stay seated, ‘stay comfortable, my son tells me you had quite the adventure.’

Dragon goes straight to her mistress as she approaches, and the Countess sits on another chair, arranges her skirt neatly, and thanks the maid for laying the tea things out on the table. Dragon tucks herself in at the Countess’ feet, not getting on her skirt the way she had on Shera’s robe, and Shera tightens said robe about herself as she tries to get her ankle into a comfortable position.

‘Is there anything, My Lady?’ the maid asks, and she shakes her head.

‘I do believe Mrs Wright will be by with breakfast shortly,’ the Countess replies, and the maid curtseys to them both before leaving.

When the door is shut, the Countess huffs and flops back into the chair.

‘Thank the Planet for that! All that ceremony!’ she exclaims, and Shera feels her eyebrows climb. ‘Oh, bring those eyebrows down before you lose them. It’s too early in the day to be worrying about things like ceremony. That’s for dinner when I have a much more suitable dress on.’

Shera tries not to stare at her, but it’s very difficult not to; the mirth in her eyes makes her a very easy thing to look at, and even easier still when she’s saying such wild things.

‘Besides all that,’ the Countess says, reaching down to scratch behind Dragon’s ears, ‘how did you sleep? I cannot fault Cid for putting you in this room, it is by far the best of the guest rooms.’

‘I slept well,’ Shera says, and tightens her arms about her middle, clutching the robe close. ‘I must say thank you to him, and to you, for allowing me to stay. I should – I should return home, soon.’

‘Oh, hogwash,’ the Countess snorts, waving a dismissive hand. ‘You’re in no fit state to travel, and I shall have a note sent to your parents that you are to stay here until you are fully restored. I’m sure your father will agree with me. He’s a very sensible man.’

It had not occurred to her, in the way that lots of things never occur to her, because Shera is not an occurring sort of girl, that it was highly likely that her father had treated some malady or another up here in the big house. But it would make sense for him to have done so, for he treated many of the upper class for all sorts of things, from common colds to broken limbs after falling off their chocobos during some stupid hunt or another. Shera cannot understand the appeal of hunting herself, but there are worse things for the nobs to entertain themselves with, she supposes.

‘I suppose so,’ she agrees, because it’s clear the Countess is waiting for an answer.

Nodding, the Countess adjusts a fold in her skirt, and hums in consideration.

‘I suppose we shall have to find you something presentable to wear,’ she says, and Shera feels her eyebrows crease. ‘Now, now, take that look off of your face, I’m not saying you aren’t presentable as you are.’

Shera automatically glances down at her robe, the little glimpse of her decolletage that the silken hem offers, the expanse of shin on display with her foot raised as it is, the forearms folded across her middle. She isn’t presentable in the least, but she supposes she’s more presentable than if she wore nothing at all.

‘For now, in the Wutai bedroom as you are, I think you are perfectly sufficient.’

It’s an odd compliment, but one that makes colour rise to her cheeks all the same. She’s never been called perfectly anything before, and there’s an odd warmth that comes from a Countess calling you perfectly sufficient that she had never expected to experience.

For a few minutes, they sit silently, the Countess with her tea, looking out over the gardens, Shera looking into her lap, trying not to pick at her nails. The silence, comfortable though stilted, breaks when the door opens and the breakfast tray comes rattling in, followed swiftly by voices.

‘I don’t fuckin’ think so,’ comes Lord Highwind’s voice, and Shera glances up to see the Countess roll her eyes skyward.

‘His language is atrocious,’ she says.

‘Born and bred,’ Shera parrots, and the Countess snorts.

‘Told you that, did he? He’ll blame me until he dies, no doubt.’

Shera cannot imagine the Countess of Rakheim swearing, but there’s a twinkle in her eye that makes her suspect perhaps she should try harder.

‘It’s my fuckin’ mother,’ Lord Highwind continues; Shera hadn’t heard a reply that should elicit such a response. ‘And it ain’t like I ain’t never seen no – no – woman half-dressed before.’

Shera feels her face burning, and the Countess heaves a breath like she wants it to be her last.

‘Sir,’ says the maid, desperately, ‘I don’t think it’s proper.’

‘Then it’s a good job you aren’t paid to think,’ Lord Highwind snorts, which is the rudest reply he could have uttered, and without any further ado, in he strolls, half-dressed himself.

‘Put your sleeves down,’ his mother demands immediately, and Shera can see where he gets it from.

Lord Highwind stands there for a moment, opens his mouth halfway, and then huffs out a breath, short and sharp, but does as bid and rolls his sleeves down. They’re hopelessly crumpled already, and look ridiculous flapping about his wrists without the cufflinks to hold them in place, but the shirt is a pleasing shade of blue that softens the brightness of his eyes, and matches wonderfully with the tan of his waistcoat and trousers, though he could, Shera thinks to herself, stand to straighten his tie. He’s just as handsome now as he had been the prior evening, half-hidden behind the mist and moon, freshly shaved and his blond hair combed. She’s surprised he’s not already married; the girls in the town, no doubt, have been chomping at the bit to get his attention since they debuted, though Shera can’t admit to having paid attention to the goings-on in the courting world since her own debut had been uneventful some decade prior.

‘I suppose I can’t smoke either?’ he asks, and the Countess makes a rude little noise of disgust in the back of her throat, turning her gaze back to the window.

‘Hopeless,’ she grumbles.

The poor maid is still stood there with the breakfast tray, and the Earl glances back over his shoulder.

‘The Ladies are starving,’ he says, ‘best hop to it.’

‘You can be such a brute at time,’ his mother chastises, and Shera thinks she sees pink in his ears.

‘You’ve done a grand job,’ he offers, and the maid blushes, very prettily, and curtseys.

‘Thank you, My Lord,’ she says, ‘but you have Mrs Noreika to thank.’

‘Then extend my compliments.’

The Countess raises an eyebrow to Shera as the maid clears the clutter of the two tea trays and replaces it with the tray of breakfast goods.

‘He can do very well when he tries,’ she offers, quiet enough that it’s clear it’s meant to attract her son’s attention by being not for his ears.

‘Yes, well, some of the beatings stuck,’ Lord Highwind offers, and steps out of the way to let the maid past. ‘I see you’ve stolen my dog.’

Said dog is staunchly ignoring him, still lay next to the Countess’ feet, and only briefly looks up to see her master.

‘She’s a beautiful dog,’ Shera offers, and Lord Highwind snorts, clucks his tongue.

‘Dragon, come.’

Dragon does as bid, stretching her way to her feet before going to sit patiently at her master’s feet. Her tongue lolls before she scoops it back into her mouth, and she stares up at Lord Highwind’s fingers, hanging loose at his thigh, no doubt expecting treats.

‘I suppose I shall leave you to it,’ he says, ‘and perhaps see you for luncheon?’

This, directed to Shera, who feels suddenly very exposed under his gaze, naked even. It’s an intense gaze, certainly, fixed upon her and only her, and she twitches at the neckline of the robe.

‘Um,’ she says, helpfully.

‘Cid,’ his mother says, ‘leave the poor thing alone, she can barely walk.’

‘Light as a feather,’ he replies, ‘and there are bannisters enough to get her downstairs.’

Shera has never seen a lady of any social standing come so close to losing her composure, but the Countess looks very much like she wants to throttle her son.

‘Get out of here,’ she says, terse but entirely without malice, and with a snicker, Lord Highwind turns on his heels and takes his leave.

When the door is shut, the Countess heaves another sigh.

‘Thirty-fucking-two,’ she says, and Shera nearly drops a plate she’d just picked up. ‘Are you alright, dear?’

Clearing her throat, Shera nods. ‘I’m fine, My Lady.’

They fall silent then, content to help themselves to breakfast items, and it’s curious to see the Countess have such a healthy appetite; Shera would have expected restraint and delicacy, but she’d be just as at home in a townhouse, Shera thinks, as she would the big house. Nothing is said while they eat, though a maid does enter partway through to bring the paper, for which Lady Rakheim thanks the maid, and then her attention is near-solely upon the broadsheet, and Shera is able to take stock of just what had happened in the previous half-hour.

It had felt provocative, almost, of Lord Highwind. A challenge, perhaps. Deliberately flouting convention and decorum and the manner expected of his title, to not only enter a lady’s bedchamber without invitation, but to do so in his shirt-sleeves and with them rolled above his elbows like a common farmhand! And to invite her to luncheon, when he must surely know she has neither clothes to wear nor ankle to walk on! His mother’s reactions spoke volumes of his behaviour, of his general attitude leaning towards the improper and unrefined, dare she say, _common_ , but to choose such a behaviour, an attitude so deliberately. She wonders if he has not decided to play some game with her, and she has never been one for that, neither clever enough nor interested enough to engage with them.

‘You look deep in thought,’ the Countess says, ‘no doubt my son’s behaviour.’

‘In part,’ Shera admits, shocked at how transparent her face must be.

‘Don’t let him disturb your thoughts,’ the Countess tells her, ‘he is hardly worth it, and worth even less trouble besides. His late father used to tell me that he would amount to little more than a headache, and that I would have only my own strong nature to blame. He means well enough, and he has no patience for games, so he shan’t play them.’

‘I see,’ Shera says, though she doesn’t, not really.

The Countess finishes her last mouthful of food and sets her plate down before going to the bell-pull.

‘I will see about getting you something else to wear,’ she says, ‘but for now, rest, and relax, and the maids will see to it that you want for nothing.’

And with that, she’s gone, just as quickly as she came. The silence of the room, the emptiness, leaves Shera feeling very peculiar indeed, and she draws the robe in tight about her neck.

* * *

About half an hour after the Countess has left, and Shera is beginning to grow restless sitting there with nothing to do but look out of the window, the door knocks again.

‘Yes?’ she calls.

‘May I come in?’

She doesn’t jump, but she does do a double-take. Lord Highwind’s voice had not been the voice she expected to hear.

‘Yes?’ she repeats, because she knows that she shouldn’t – no doubt he is alone, and she does not think a dog counts as a chaperone, but this is his house, and the half-hour of solitude had already been too much to bear.

At the very least, she can ask him for a book to read, or something to occupy her time. She’s hopeless with embroidery, but she’d be willing to give it a go, just to try and stave off the boredom.

It isn’t that she is ungrateful, far from it, and neither is the room boring! It’s a beautiful room, with some of the most beautiful paper she’s ever seen, enchanting landscapes and brilliant colours that must have taken a very skilled hand to create, and the furniture is elegant, lacquered in black with gold inlays, or a dark wood where there is no lacquer. It is all very expensive-seeming, and she imagines only the very best of guests stay in this room. But it does not change that she can only look at it all so many times.

He’s looking over his shoulder when he enters, dog slipping past his heels to come and rest at the base of Shera’s chair. Shera watches him check the corridor, admires the line of his jaw, stronger than she’d expect of the upper class, who from her experience have always had quite soft jaw lines. Finding, evidently, that there is nobody there to see him, he steps into the room properly and shuts the door. Then, bizarrely, he seems surprised that he’s in the room and that she’s in the room and that there is nobody else there, which surely he must have known, given that he knocked and asked to enter.

His surprise surprises her, and she freezes, feels trapped.

‘Uh,’ he says, and Shera echoes it.

‘Um,’ she replies.

‘I came to – apologise,’ he says, gently enough, but with the gruffness of one clearly unused to apologising. ‘I was – well my mother says I was fuckin’ crass, and I suppose I’d better apologise for that, ‘cause ain’t no way for an Earl to behave.’

This last he says in the mocking tone of a child mimicking its parent, a tone Shera has heard often enough out of her own mouth, when she was young enough to not understand how rude it was.

‘It’s – uh – it’s nothing to – you don’t have to – I thought perhaps – I thought maybe I should. I’m sorry.’

It’s reflexive, and Lord Highwind looks incredibly bothered by it.

‘The fuck you apologising for?’ he demands.

Shera doesn’t know what she’s apologising for exactly, but feels that she should, and says as such.

‘I don’t know what I’m apologising for,’ she says, ‘not exactly. But I feel you are owed one.’

Lord Highwind snorts and drops himself into the seat his mother had sat in a half-hour ago, legs akimbo and arms draped casually across the rests, one hand coming to rest under his cheekbone and the other fingers dangling over the sides. He looks very relaxed, and the stretch of his waistcoat and shirt shows just how well-fitted it is, and how – how – Shera has not seen any of the upper class look quite as broad in the shoulder as he is, but it doesn’t disagree with him. The calluses she’d felt on his palms had told her he worked with his hands, and it was only natural that his shoulders should accompany them.

‘It,’ he starts, with something like a frown, and he fidgets, shifts to pull a little tin from his pocket, from which he draws a cigarette and a match. ‘Do you mind?’

Shera shakes her head, and he lights the cigarette, which fits too well between his fingers, a very practiced gesture of ease. She’d rather he didn’t get the ash on the rug, but she supposes it is his house, and he can do with the rug what he likes.

As if sensing her gaze, he leans forwards and taps the ash into an empty teacup left by the maid on cleaning away the breakfast things.

‘I’d offer you one, but I doubt you smoke.’

‘No, My Lord, I do not.’

He leans back in his chair, biting his lip and studying her. She tries her best not to flush, but his gaze lingers on the folds of the robe, at her bust and hips and where it falls apart across her thigh, her ankle still bandaged and raised. It’s still very, very sore, but she’s adjusted to it now, used to the pressure.

‘You took a nastier fall than I thought,’ he says, jerking his chin at her ankle.

‘Yes,’ she hums back, her lips twisting momentarily, and she tries to adjust the robe to cover more of her leg, but it simply doesn’t want to go over her knee. ‘It will take some time to heal, I suppose.’

‘You’re more than welcome to stay here,’ he blurts out, and it seems to surprise him as much as her. His eyes are very wide, and very blue, and she swallows thickly. ‘I mean. _Fuck_! I insist you stay here to rest. I can send for the best doctor in town, to ensure you are getting the best treatment – you’re laughing.’

‘Yes,’ she giggles, and hides her smile behind her hand. ‘Yes, but – but not at you. It’s just – you mean Doctor Crescent.’

Lord Highwind nods. ‘Obviously. He has helped with every malady my family has ever had under his tenure as doctor.’

‘That’s my father,’ she says after a moment when he stares blankly at her silence.

‘Father?’ he echoes, as though he has no idea what one is.

‘He married my mother,’ she says, feels her ears burn at the look he gives her at her tease, creeping down her neck the longer he looks at her. ‘And you know, when a man loves a woman very, very much, sometimes they have a child.’

His lips twitch, and he hides it behind a drag of his cigarette, which he stubs out in the teacup.

‘You gotta be fuckin’ bored,’ he says, instead of replying. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to the library.’

‘Library?’

‘Better than sitting in this shithole all day.’

‘This is the nicest guest room,’ she replies, and he huffs out a laugh through his nose, gets to his feet.

His trousers crease in well-pressed sorts of ways, and she does her best not to look as he takes the couple of steps to her to take her hands.

‘You don’t intend to carry me again?’ she asks, accepting them and letting him pull her to her feet.

The dog, because of course she is, is lay on the train of the robe, which yanks under the tug of Shera’s shoulder, and slips down to her elbow, the knot loosening just enough to allow the fabric to fall. Shera gets half a syllable out of her mouth, but is unable to let go of Lord Highwind’s hands, all of her weight in their clasped palms as it is, to rectify it before it can come completely undone.

For a moment, they freeze, eyes fixed on the other’s, and the only sound is their breath, the heat of it across their faces.

‘I,’ Shera starts, and Lord Highwind swallows thickly.

Shera watches his Adam’s apple bob, gaze flickering across his mouth, his eyes, watching them flicker in turn. Her weight steadies, settles on her good ankle, and he slowly lets go of her hands. The air is thick in her lungs, choking her without starving her of breath, and she can feel it shudder. She hasn’t been naked in front of a man since her father bathed her as a baby, and though she is not naked now, not really, she can see his gaze flicker, to her mouth, her collar, her elbow. His fingertips are cool against her arm, as soft as the first dusting of snowfall, as he traces a line down to her elbow, gently tugging the robe back into place. There is no denying that he looked, and that he saw, and her mouth feels dry, her face burnt.

His fingers stay on her neck, at the soft join to her shoulder, tensed beneath the embarrassment of having – having – _displayed_ herself so.

‘I,’ Lord Highwind chokes out, his mouth sounding as dry as hers feels.

‘I’m,’ she starts, but he curls his fingers into the lace of the robe.

‘Don’t fucking apologise,’ he whispers, and his eyes are hot when they catch hers, black and searching hers for something she hopes he finds. ‘It’s the fucking dog’s fault.’

Said dog is sat a few feet away, looking disappointed at being moved, and oblivious to the impropriety it just caused. Being alone in a closed room with a man was not bad enough, no, she had to create a display of flesh Shera is not sure she could show to a man she was married to!

Shera nods, swallows thickly, and Lord Highwind’s fingertips brush up her neck, the shell of her ear.

‘My mother’s maid should do something with your hair,’ he says, which is so removed from the heat of his skin, the fire in his eyes, that she almost laughs, feeling turned about and lost at once.

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ she admits, and Lord Highwind nods, offers her his arm.

‘I will show you the library,’ he says, ‘and summon a maid. Then, if you – I want you to take luncheon with us.’

‘Us?’

‘My mother and I. You can’t stay in the Wutai Bedroom eating toast for two weeks.’

Shera does laugh at that, and supposes not.

He has obviously given no consideration to the fact she will be dining with him in not only the wrong dress, but no dress at all, and so she will not trouble herself with that thought either.

‘I accept your invitation, Lord Highwind.’

‘Cid,’ he says, ‘please. I fucking hate titles. I’d give it away if I could, but I’ll still be stuck with Deist when Kain dies.’

‘Cid,’ Shera repeats, and he nods, looks pleased, then expectant. It takes her a moment to realise he’s waiting for her name. ‘Shera.’

‘Shera,’ he echoes, with another nod. ‘Well, Shera, welcome to Galaeth House, seat of Rakheim.’

She smiles at him, gives a soft nod.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘Now! To the library. There are far more comfortable chairs in there, and plenty of books, assuming you read, of course.’

‘What kind of girl doesn’t read?’

At this, Lord Highwind gives her a look that makes her wonder what kind of thing she’s been missing by sticking her nose so deeply into every book she can get her hands on.

The library is a beautiful room, several free-standing shelves stocked to the brim with books, and wall-to-wall with them too. There’s a large fireplace that hasn’t been lit yet this morning, but has been made ready, and the windows are clean and the curtains drawn to let in the most light possible.

‘We’ve got a lot of books,’ he tells her, and guides her over to the chair by the fire, a cosy-looking wingback monstrosity that’s been overstuffed and worn on the armrests. ‘But I gotta be honest, I ain’t much of a reader, so I can’t tell you if we got any good ones. I only come in here for the manuals for the car.’

‘Car?’ Shera asks, because she’s not sure anyone in town actually has one. They’re rare outside of Midgar, from what she understands.

‘Yeah,’ Lord Highwind nods, ‘it’s a piece of shit, but I love it, it’s something to do besides pretend to give a shit about my manners. I’ll show you, if you like, when your ankle’s up to the stairs.’

Shera looks at her ankle, and laughs a little.

‘I’d like that,’ she says.

Lord Highwind nods, and gestures widely at the room. ‘You’re welcome to any of the ones you look. I’ll – here, I knew the old bat would leave one in here.’

He’s across the room and back in less time than it takes Shera to process what he’s said. There’s a cane in his hand, some pretty little mahogany thing with a carved hare’s head as the topper. It’s a wonderful little thing, and Shera takes it from him with a soft thanks.

‘Freedom, eh?’ he shrugs. ‘I’d hate bein’ laid up.’

She nods, and makes sure the robe is tightly fastened and not beneath the cane as she stands again. It takes her a few steps to get used to balancing her weight, but then she gets from one end of the rug to the other, and she feels better for it. Being able to walk without another person’s assistance, to be able to go at her pace, it brings more freedom than she’d expected it to.

‘Thank you,’ she says again, a little more heartfelt than it probably should have been for how small the gesture is.

He smiles at her from his position leaning on the mantel, arms and ankles crossed and looking very much the lord of the manor. Which he is, she supposes. It surprises her, again, that he’s not married.

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, with a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and makes her belly flip over itself and tighten almost uncomfortably.

For a moment, they watch each other, and then he nods to himself, straightens up.

‘Luncheon’s usually about one,’ he says, ‘if I track down a maid to sort your hair?’

She hesitates for a moment, watches his eyes track her, the lingering on what little curve she has, mostly hidden behind the drape of the robe.

‘Shera?’

She blinks, snaps back to it. He’s looking at her, eyes intense, heated. She shivers.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘of course.’

He nods, and gives her a smart half-bow before turning on his heel to leave, Dragon trotting after him. The door swings shut, and she’s alone again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> galaeth is welsh for galaxy, and rakheim is something scarfloor told me people are apparently calling the rocket town area? im running with it
> 
> i'm also horribly aware that it should be lord rakheim not lord highwind, but alas lmao


	3. Luncheon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shera joins the Lord and Lady Highwind for luncheon and Cid does a spot of gardening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot how much I love this au.
> 
> Enjoy, lovelies~!

It’s Mrs Wright that comes to sort her hair, brush in hand and tea on a tray.

‘You’re very kind,’ Shera says, glancing at her from the book in her hands.

Lord Highwind had left her some twenty minutes ago, during which time she’d found an interesting book on the history of the crystal lakes just south of the area, after leafing through several other books that she hadn’t gotten much further than a few pages into before discarding. It was Shera’s way of reading; by the end of the week, she’d have read them all, but the order was as much as mystery to her as it was anyone seeing the books scattered without reason.

‘His Lordship insisted you were brought tea,’ Mrs Wright says, placing the tray on the table, nudging another pile of books out of the way as gently as possible. ‘You – well, I am sure he’d be embarrassed to hear it, but you’ve made something of an impression on him.’

Shera feels the flush creeping across her cheeks before she’s really had a moment to process the words.

‘Impression?’ she echoes, quietly. ‘I – he’s exaggerating, I’m not very impressive.’

Mrs Wright hums, and says nothing more about it, clearly not believing her. Instead, she picks up the brush and some pins and moves behind the chair where Shera is sat.

‘He has invited me to lunch,’ Shera offers, head pulled to one side so that Mrs Wright can get at the hair at her temple.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Wright agrees, around a mouthful of pins. ‘He’s thrown Cook into a panic over it. Mrs Noreika rarely prepares a meal for more than the Lord and Lady.’

‘I don’t eat much,’ Shera admits, which is not so much because she desires the elegant slenderness she hears the girls in town talk about struggling to maintain, and more so because she simply forgets, caught up in a book, or a walk, or some other happening that occupies her.

Mrs Wright hums. ‘I can see that,’ she says, and tilts Shera’s head the other way to get at the other side.

It doesn’t feel like she means it insultingly, but Shera wonders if perhaps she should try harder to remember that mealtimes exist. She stares at the book in her lap for several moments, before breaking the silence again.

‘Does Lord Highwind not entertain often?’

‘As little as he can afford to,’ Mrs Wright admits with a snort. ‘Of course, he has to host visiting dignitaries and gentlemen and so on, as the local Lord must, but he – I can’t speak for him,’ she says after a hesitation.

Shera understands, and Mrs Wright has said enough already. Shera doesn’t ask any more questions, and instead turns an unread page of the book, waits patiently for the last of the braids to be pinned into place.

‘There,’ Mrs Wright says, with a soft pat of her hands against Shera’s hair, as if plumping a cushion or smoothing the pile of velvet. ‘Perfect.’

Shera feels her ears burn and stares resolutely at the book.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

Mrs Wright hums, and asks if there’s anything else.

‘No,’ Shera says, at length, ‘no, I think – has there been any word from my parents?’

‘Not yet, Ma’am,’ Mrs Wright replies, ‘though I’m sure there will be one soon.’

It’s only some minutes later, as Shera looks at the expanse of green visible in the window from where she’s sat, that she realises she has no idea how she’s supposed to get to the dining room for lunch.

* * *

Lord Highwind comes to collect her, and comes crashing into the room with the kind of confidence and assuredness that comes with being a member of the upper class that has never had to excuse himself. She startles, nearly drops the teacup she’s holding, and _does_ drop the book.

She whirls in her chair and startles them both.

‘Sir!’ she exclaims, before she’s really taken a second to stop her mouth.

‘What?’ he demands back, and they stare at each other for a longer moment than is probably necessary.

He’s taking in the long sweep of her neck, the soft curl of her hair as it twists away from her face, opening up the curve of her ear, the brightness in her eyes, the jut of her shoulders beneath the robe, and he’s seen the skin beneath the lace and silk, he knows what it looks like, he knows the freckles and the way the shadows cling to the dip of her collar. She takes in the same suit he’d been wearing at what had passed for breakfast, beneath the filthiest set of overalls she’s ever seen, torn at the knees and stained black with grease. He’s got a smear of that same grease halfway across his cheek, goggles atop his head, filthy gloves on his hands.

‘You’re going to lunch like that?’ she asks, before she can stop herself.

‘Fuck sake,’ he grunts, ‘you judgin’ me like my fucking mother, now?’

She blinks, feels heat in her cheeks, and ducks back down behind the chair.

‘No, My Lord,’ she tells the wing of the chair, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ he bites.

For a moment there’s silence, and then a dull slap of leather, and she peeks around the chair to find him tossing the gloves on a table, yanking his way out of the overalls. For a man who had been trained since birth to have poise, and for one who had walked over unsteady woodland as though he were born among it, he can’t balance very well on one foot and has to hop to reach his ankle.

She snickers, and he turns a glare to her that makes her hide again.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he bites again, but it’s gentler this time, and she hears, rather than sees, the edge of a smile around his mouth.

‘I’m,’ she starts, but he cuts her off with a sharp dismissal.

‘No.’

And that’s the end of that.

‘Cook didn’t know what you ate,’ he says as his feet thud back onto the rug and his steps turn whisper quiet on his approach to the chair. ‘So she’s prepared a bit of everything.’

‘I – I don’t.’

He shrugs, picks up one of the books she’s been reading before tossing it back onto the pile.

‘Mrs Wright said you don’t eat a lot. Don’t worry about it, it’ll get eaten by someone. Just make sure you eat what you put on your plate, so it don’t go to waste.’

He’s forgotten to take the goggles off, and she takes a moment to watch him. He’s looking at the books with a crease between his brows, like he’s trying to work out some rhyme or reason to the books she’s got piled up around her, and she wishes she had the answer to that, too. His sleeves are rolled again, his tie crooked, hair mussed as though he’s been pulling at it, and she wonders what that level of confidence in yourself must feel like. To have so many expectations for your presentation and your conduct, and to stand there dishevelled and with grease on your face anyway.

‘How do you read so many books at once?’ he asks her, and she blinks, moves to set the teacup down.

‘I don’t,’ she says, chances a smile, ‘I read them one at a time.’

The look he gives her is droll, bordering on dry. After a moment, he snorts and sighs.

‘You’re funny,’ he tells her, and it’s the first time someone’s said that and meant it kindly. ‘Come on, we’d best get down there ‘fore the dog thinks she’s being starved.’

She’s about to ask what he means – the reality is simple enough, in that he feeds the dog from his plate because he’s weak for the puppy eyes she gives him, and really he ought to not encourage the behaviour, but a bit of meat never hurt her – but doesn’t even get to open her mouth before his hands have found their way around her to scoop her up again. The sudden rush of weightlessness with which he straightens up leaves her breathless, and she can’t help but grab a fistful of his shirt, which makes him laugh.

‘And I’d done so well to keep it neatly pressed,’ he huffs, but the sarcasm is so thick on his tone that she can’t help but smooth it out again.

‘I wasn’t expecting it, sir,’ she admits, and he kicks the library door shut behind him as they leave.

‘How else you goin’ to get down the stairs? My mother would kill me if she caught you walking, and a few steps around the library ain’t the same as these fuckers.’

She’s barely jostled as he descends, so smooth in his gait that she feels it a slope, not a flight of stairs, and she hears Lady Rakheim tutting before she sees her.

‘The poor girl,’ Lady Rakheim says, ‘you couldn’t have at least washed your face?’

Lord Highwind rolls his eyes, lip curling for a moment, and Shera finds the way the shadow of his stubble alights to gold as it catches the light fascinating. She hadn’t even noticed it until it did, and she wonders if that speaks more of her eyesight and attention than of his shaving habits.

‘I was late coming in,’ he explains, and his hand leaves Shera’s knee for a second – to gesture, she assumes. ‘After you.’

Lady Rakheim shakes her head and leads the way into the dining room.

It is a beautiful room, light and open and decorated with paintings and elegant furniture. She’s still taking it in as Lord Highwind sets her into a stiff-backed chair and her attention’s only caught when he drags another chair around to set her ankle upon its seat. The touch of his fingers, rough and dry and warm, on her calf make her jump, gaze taken from a landscape painting straight to him. He looks as shocked at her reaction as she is, blue eyes so wide and mouth half-open as if to say something.

‘Well, Mr Wright,’ Lady Rakheim says, far louder than she necessarily need to, ‘you must extend our compliments to Mrs Noreika, she’s done a fabulous job considering we weren’t expecting a guest.’

Lord Highwind clears his throat and straightens, and Shera adjusts the tightness of the robe around her neck, feels exposed again, even though she has only half a leg on display. He rounds the table to sit beside her, his mother opposite, and Shera straightens herself in the chair, looks at the dishes presented and doesn’t know where to even attempt to begin.

‘You look terrified,’ Lady Rakheim says, without malice.

‘Mother,’ Lord Highwind chides, before Shera’s had chance to open her mouth.

Lady Rakheim raises an eyebrow at her son before reaching across the table and helping herself – helping herself! – to a spoonful of something that might be a stew of some kind.

‘What do you usually eat?’ she asks, ‘I understand both of your parents work.’

It’s unseemly, she knows, but Shera picks at her fingernails as she talks, can’t help it. ‘I – I often forget, My Lady, when I am at home. Because it’s just me, Cook doesn’t put on a service like this, so if I do eat, it is simply – uh – bread and cheese, cold cuts, if we have any left. Baked goods, if she’s made any, pies and things.’

As she talks, staring at her fingertips as she is, she misses Lord Highwind reach across the table and pick her plate up, serving her small portions of several of the dishes.

‘I must admit,’ Lady Rakheim says, watching her son’s hand hover for a moment between two types of bread with some amusement in her voice, ‘we do not often take proper luncheons, and even this is not proper, as we usually would when we have guests. Cid is not often in the house to take luncheon, and I hate to have a full service by myself. Cid, just pick a bread roll, for fuck sake.’

Shera is speechless for a second, and Lord Highwind shakes his head with a scoff before putting Shera’s plate back down for her, accompanied by two slices of bread.

‘Mother,’ he says, turning his gaze back to heaping his plate with food, ‘you put us in such a bad fuckin’ light.’

‘I do?’ she asks, arch, and turns her attention to her food.

Shera doesn’t know what to do with her now-full plate except to eat it, and hope that she uses the right cutlery, though given that neither Lord Highwind nor his mother change theirs, she doesn’t think it particularly matters. They’re right in that this is more a breakfast than a luncheon, but she supposes accommodations have been made for her lack of mobility. It’s very different to what she would experience at home, and she’s both grateful and disturbed by it.

She’s about to ask after her parents when a footman clacks his heels and enters, note on a tray.

‘A letter for My Lady, My Lord,’ he says with a bow of his head, and Lord Highwind shrugs, jerks his thumbs at Shera.

‘Hand it to her then, fuck me, I don’t care.’

The footman looks unperturbed by Lord Highwind’s manner, and extends the tray to Lady Rakheim, who offers a gracious thanks before taking the note. Shera recognises her father’s handwriting on the front as Lady Rakheim opens it, and for a moment, forgets to chew. Silence reigns for several moments as she reads the note, mouth moving without reading it aloud.

‘What’s it say?’ Lord Highwind asks, as uncouth as possible, mouth full of bread.

‘Doctor Crescent thanks us, naturally, for taking his daughter in, he calls her an errant wildling with no common sense, and he’s frankly mortified that she jumped the gate.’

Here, she glances over the note to Shera, with the kind of wicked mirth that tells her that her father _hadn’t_ said such a thing, though no doubt he’d be thinking it.

‘No, he simply thanks us for taking her in, and that he’s grateful you were out there to find her. He says that he’ll take us up on our insistence she remain here while she recovers and advises that she should be up and walking in two weeks, though she may feel pain for as long as six. I like that he puts it in writing, as though I don’t remember your sprained ankles.’

At this, a glance to her son, who rolls his eyes again and pulls a strip of meat from the rest on his plate, stretching down to give it to the dog.

‘Well, that’s simple, then,’ Lord Highwind says, scratching behind Dragon’s ears. ‘She stays here for the full six weeks.’

‘Naturally,’ Lady Rakheim nods, ‘I’m not having him accuse us of not providing the best medical care.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ Shera rushes to say, but the Countess hushes her.

‘I know he wouldn’t,’ she assures her, ‘you’ll soon learn not to take a word of what either of us say literally. My late husband would decry us for it, but I have a wicked sarcastic streak, and unfortunately my son seems to have inherited the wicked part of it.’

‘Fuck off, ’m not wicked,’ Lord Highwind retorts around a mouthful of steak, ‘I just don’t suffer fools.’

Shera feels her eyebrows raise without her permission, and struggles to get her expression neutralised before either of them see it.

‘Oh, yeah?’ Lord Highwind snorts, ‘think I’m a fuckin’ fool, eh?’

‘No, sir,’ she replies, meek enough, staring at her plate, ‘rather, I’m surprised you suffer me, for how foolish I’ve been.’

At this, he opens his mouth, and closes it again, something like a frown on his face. She stares resolutely at her plate and picks at some vegetable or another, seasoned and resting in broth.

After a moment, he says, softly, ‘you weren’t foolish, just fuckin’ stupid.’

She glances up at him, sees the expression on his face, but can’t make head nor tails of it, and turns back to her plate.

‘Well,’ Lady Rakheim says, after the silence begins to border on being awkward. She dabs at her mouth with a napkin, and drops it on her empty plate, ‘we shall have to find some clothes for our guest somewhere, so I shall go and sort that out. Feel free to eat as much as you like, Shera, you’ve not eaten much, and we shan’t dine again until late.’

Lord Highwind jerks unsteadily to his feet as his mother rises, and he doesn’t sit again until she’s clacked out of the room. Wright goes to the door to see her off, and then returns to his place by the window.

‘I have clothes at home,’ Shera offers, quietly, and Lord Highwind snorts, feeds a slice of carrot to the dog.

‘I should fuckin’ hope so.’

She watches him run his fingertip down the length of the dog’s muzzle, tapping her nose in a way that makes her sneeze.

‘What – what happened to the clothes I’d been wearing? The dress, and the – the – the corset.’

‘Huh? Fuck knows.’ He turns to Wright, and asks, ‘you know?’

‘I believe that Mrs Wright took them aside to see if they could be cleaned at all, sir.’

‘Doubt that dress could be fixed.’

He looks at Shera as he says it, because they both know the dress was a lost cause, torn along too many seams to be repaired neatly, and the mud was never going to come out of the yellow, never mind the damage done to the black netting.

Wright shrugs. ‘She will do what she can with them. When I return to the servant’s quarters, I’ll ask her.’

Lord Highwind nods. ‘Thanks.’

Shera doesn’t quite know what to do now, besides clear her plate; it was what Lord Highwind had recommended, after all, to not leave anything on her plate, and it’s about all she can manage.

‘You look tired,’ Lord Highwind says, quietly, and she supposes she is, can feel her eyelids drooping.

‘Yes,’ she agrees, with a nod. ‘I think so.’

He shoves the last of a piece of bread in his mouth, and wipes his mouth with his hand, because of course he does. She can feel, more than see, Wright roll his eyes.

‘Come on, I’ll take you to bed,’ he offers, getting to his feet and nearly treading on the dog. ‘Fuck sake, Dragon, this is how people get hurt.’

The dog looks offended at almost getting trodden on, but wags her tail anyway.

‘Idiot creature,’ Lord Highwind says, and rounds the table to come and scoop Shera up again.

He catches the robe under his hand as he encircles her knees, but she’s quick enough to keep it held tight about her this time, though it does leave her legs completely bare.

‘This is bordering on unseemly,’ she tells him, and he hums, grins at the blush that creeps up her neck when he very obviously eyes her legs.

‘I don’t know,’ he admits, ‘the view ain’t half bad.’

She goes to exclaim, and then remembers what his mother said, and opts to not take him literally.

‘Just – take me to bed,’ she says instead, and he snaps his heels.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

The journey back up the stairs is not quite so peaceful and easy as it had been on the descent. Halfway up, the doorbell rings, and the footman answers it just as they reach the top. Lord Highwind turns at the landing to see who’s called by, and the soft, but very bitter ‘fuck’ that he murmurs into Shera’s hair rouses her from the rapidly encroaching sleep.

‘Who is it?’ she asks, but he carries on down the corridor at a stride not as languid as before.

‘A pain in my fucking arse,’ he replies.

He sets her down on the bed, and without seeming to realise he’s done it, smooths a hand across her temple, brushing a loosened strand of hair back from her face.

‘Get some sleep,’ he says, ‘ring the bell when you’re awake, and a maid will bring you tea. Dinner’ll be about eight?’

He says it like a question, like he’s asking for her permission.

‘I don’t have a dinner dress.’

For a second, his gaze is heated as it flashes over her, and then it levels again when he meets her eyes.

‘I won’t change,’ he tells her, ‘I rarely do. I’ll leave the dog with you. Dragon, up.’

He pats the bed, and the dog obligingly jumps up, pads around and then flops over, a ragdoll of soft fur and lolling tongue.

She nods, looking at the dog and then at him. ‘I’ll see you, then.’

He hesitates, and then offers her a half-bow, and retreats, slamming the door behind him.

Baffled, and exhausted, and full of aching in her ankle, Shera pulls the coverlet aside and tucks herself beneath it, closes her eyes, and goes to sleep.

* * *

Miss Aerith Gainsborough, both a light in his life and a thorn in his side, is at the bottom of the stairs when he reaches them, elbows on the box newel, chin on her laced hands. She’s very pretty, as she always is, which is part, he’s learnt, of what makes her so fucking dangerous, because the prettiness is unassuming, all long brown hair and pretty pink ribbons and dresses.

‘So,’ she says, all sweetness, ‘who was that?’

‘Never you fucking mind,’ he tells her, hopping down the stairs and stomping past her.

She’s quick to follow, at his elbow.

‘I don’t mind,’ she says, prim and proper, and he _knows_ she’s going to tell everyone she fucking knows. ‘I’m just looking out for your welfare. After that business with Olivia, I just – ‘

‘My welfare!’ he interrupts, at full volume. ‘Fuck off! You know as well as I do that Olivia was never going to be anything more than an introduction, don’t even fucking try that shit.’

‘So who was that, then?’

A persistent fucker, is Miss Gainsborough.

‘Listen,’ Cid says, stopping so abruptly she nearly crashes into him. ‘She’s a woman, and she’s staying here for a couple of weeks, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘I didn’t know you’d kept that robe,’ she says, and Cid rolls his eyes. ‘Is that all she was wearing?’

‘Pack it in.’

Aerith looks at him with arched brows, and picks at the embroidery at the front of her dress. It’s a pretty thing, because her mother makes sure she’s dressed well, even if opening her mouth dispels any illusions at her being a sensible girl. A vibrant cerise tulle on the shoulders and bust, a softer pink satin of the main dress, plenty of embroidery, a flattering cut, it’s all very nice.

‘What are you here for, anyway? I thought you were fleeing the country with that boy of yours.’

‘Oh, we still are,’ she dismisses with a wave of her hand. ‘But we can do that whenever we choose. No, I thought I’d come and annoy your gardener some more. I’ve almost convinced him to let me use the overgrown patch to grow vegetables.’

At this, Cid raises an eyebrow. ‘Almost?’

‘Another few days, and I’ll have him agreeing. I want your permission, though, thought maybe you could tell him, it’ll put some weight behind my proposal.’

‘You want me to tell the gardener to let you make a mess of his garden?’

‘There’s a huge section he still hasn’t gotten under control, and there will always be a need for vegetables. I’m sure your Cook would love to have produce on the doorstep.’

Cid rubs his face.

‘For fuck sake, kid,’ he says, ‘you know I don’t give a single shit what you do out there.’

She stares up at him for a second, two, three, and then smiles.

‘You’re very preoccupied today,’ she tells him, ‘you’ve barely sworn.’

‘What do you want?’ he demands, ‘where’s the gardener, come on, if it gets you off my arse.’

Aerith grins at him and bounds off towards the doors. He rolls his eyes, follows her outside, and lets her chatter away at him as they walk. Eventually, they come across the gardener, trimming a hedge on a ladder.

‘Oh, My Lord, it is nice to see you!’ he exclaims, and hurries down the ladder to greet Cid properly.

Cid waves his hand. ‘Ah, fuck the pleasantries. This one wants to do a vegetable patch or some shit, work it out amongst yourselves, but let her. She’s only going to be more annoying the longer you hold out on her, and I gotta admit, I’m bored of listening to her.’

The gardener is flummoxed, but nods.

‘Sorted,’ he says to Aerith. ‘Don’t eat him alive, he does a good job with the hedges.’

He nods to the gardener, turns on his heel, and fucks off back towards the house. Aerith hesitates, and he can feel her hesitate; she wants to follow him, nag him some more about the mystery girl she’d seen in his arms, but the gardener is already talking to her about the patch she wants. Thanks fuck, he needs some time alone, even just five fucking minutes.

The car is in pieces still when he reaches the garage, because he’d been pulling it apart to clean the underside free of the mud that had gotten caked on there, but that’s okay. The seats are still in there, and he climbs into the driver’s one, sits there staring out of the windscreen, rests his elbows on the wheel and his chin in his hands. The view isn’t anything spectacular; the back side of the garage, converted from one of the stables. He should, really, take one of the chocobos out, even if it’s just to do a quick run across the fields and back. He closes his eyes. Sighs. Opens them again.

After the parade of women his mother’s trotted past him in the last decade, and the few that have thrown themselves in his way when he’s tried to get something done in town, why is it this slip of a girl with her bony elbows and her absolutely lack of anything resembling a fucking curve, why is it _her_ that gets under his skin? How has she managed, in less than twenty-four hours, to make him boil with rage and yet not be angry at all?

No, no, he’s a grown man, he can acknowledge when he’s being unfair. She’s not making him boil with rage, his desperate, insane need to impress her is making him make _himself_ boil with rage. It’s not her fault and putting it on her is like blaming her for tripping and falling.

If she were anyone else, he might think it a deliberate act to get his attention – his affection, even. But the way she acts, the honesty of her every breath, she’s not deliberately injured herself to put herself upon him. Judging by the books she’d been reading, she’s too smart to have thought of something like that. Her cleverness with books and science has taken away from her cleverness with people, with lives, with hearts.

Her drums his fingers against his cheeks, stares at the wall, grinds his teeth.

Why does he care so much about what she thinks? What she feels? He won’t deny, her skin was soft, felt nice under his fingertips. He wouldn’t – oh, be honest with yourself, Cid! You wouldn’t mind having her in your bed, seeing what other parts of her were soft! Be fucking honest!

With a huff of breath that spoke volumes of his disgust with himself for the trill of pleasure that shot down his spine like thunder at the thought, he jams his hands into his pockets and fishes out a cigarette and a match, and angrily puffs his way through it, chin folded into his chest and arms crossed.

‘Fucking idiot,’ he tells the edge of his reflection in the glass.

He finds himself thinking about that moment when she’d stood, when Dragon had been so conveniently lay as to hold her robe in place to make it slip, and he thinks about how much he’d wanted to push the other shoulder of the robe down, how he’d wanted to draw her in and – and –

He shakes himself out like a wet dog, and ignores the way his heart skips a beat or two. She’s an idiot, certainly, but she’s sensible, and she’d _said_ , hadn’t she, that she’d gotten herself lost because she was escaping some suitor she didn’t want? If she’d escaped one suitor, that didn’t mean she was interested in getting another.

‘You’re thirty-two,’ he tells himself. ‘Some duchess or another will show up soon enough and it’ll be a marriage of convenience, but it’ll be for the fucking best.’

He runs his hands through his hair, knocking the goggles off his head, and he sighs, rifles behind him for them, holds them in his hands.

She’d shown some interest in the car. He’ll take her out in it, eventually. She’ll be here for two weeks, minimum. His mother wants her here for the full six it’ll take for her to recover, and he can’t say he’s opposed to the idea. Though he doesn’t know how long his patience will last if she stays in that fucking robe.

No, no, he needs to get her some other clothes to wear, even if it’s just a fucking maid’s uniform for the time being. Maybe he should take a ride into town, go and see her parents, get a case of her things for her. She’d – she’d like that, wouldn’t she?

He’s got a few hours before the dinner gong darkens his mood, he’s got time to do that. And he should look at going to Midgar. Her dinner dress was spoiled on his lands, the least he can do is replace it.

‘Right,’ he says, ‘yes.’

A plan of action, good. Right. He supposes he’d better go and change then, if he’s going to ride.


	4. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shera goes to dinner and struggles with what to wear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a short one, it feels like a natural break here before a small time skip
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Shera wakes to find the hare-topped cane beside the bed, and her heart does a little – little – something, deep within her chest at the sight of it. By the sun still streaming through the window, she can’t have been asleep long, but the dog is gone, and she’d had no recollection of the bed shifting or the door moving. She wonders when he came by, whether he stopped to look at her, or just drop off the cane and take his dog back.

‘Idiot,’ she chastises herself, and rubs her eyes before throwing the coverlet aside and reaching for the cane.

The bell-pull, because of course it is, is on the other side of the room, next to the fireplace, and she takes her time getting there. By the time a maid arrives, holding a tea-tray and looking apologetic for having taken so long, she’s been to the library and back, and is sat in the chair nearest the window, book open, but gaze on the gardens. She pretends, to herself mostly, because the maid won’t ask, that she isn’t looking for him.

‘Thank you,’ she says, when the tray clatters onto the table and startles her. ‘I – has Lord Highwind gone out?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ the maid replies with a little bob of her knees, which Shera knows she does not deserve at all. ‘He said to bring you tea when you rang the bell, and to let you know he was going to town to see about some clothes for you.’

Her cheeks colour, she knows by the heat blossoming in them, and she turns her face away.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and the maid dismisses herself.

When the door is shut again, and she’s alone with her thoughts, she looks out across the expanse of greenery, and heaves a sigh.

She has imposed enough upon them already, and now Lord Highwind – Cid, he’d asked to be called by his name, and she whispers it to herself, wonders at the tingle on her tongue as she does so – is off fetching her this and that. She’s embarrassed, and she cannot imagine what her parents would make of it all.

Her parents, for what it is worth, are not at home when Cid calls, but the maid flusters herself at the appearance of the Earl on the doorstep. Cid does not ask to enter, merely asks that she pack a case of Shera’s things that he might take back to the estate with him and stands there with some amusement as the maid leaves the door open to go and do so.

It’s a simple house, he can see from his position at the threshold, fresh and light and plain, but not unattractive, in so much as a house can be attractive or not. It looks loved, cared-for, respected, and he wonders at Shera’s childhood. He thinks to ask when the maid returns, but has forgotten by then, and takes the case offered to him with a nod.

‘Thank you,’ he says, and the maid goes to curtsey when she seems to remember something.

‘Oh! You must take these back with you, My Lord,’ she says, and scurries into another room, coming back with a small kid envelope. ‘Her spectacles.’

‘She needs them?’ he asks, taking the proffered pouch and tucking it into the pocket of his jacket.

The maid purses her lips for a moment, as she considers. ‘She can see without them, so I understand. But detail is lost on her.’

He finds himself grinning; she’s full of shit with that reading several books lark. Most likely she was staring at the pictures and hoping for the best.

‘Please,’ he says, when he’s got his grin back under control, ‘let the good doctor know that I came by, so that he don’t worry about his daughter’s things.’

The maid nods, and curtseys, and he swings himself back into the saddle before tipping his cap to her and trotting off on his way through town.

Shera does not know about this, of course, but finds herself fretting about what she’s going to do about dinner. Dinner is a far more formal affair than luncheon, even if it has no new bodies attending it, and etiquette has been dismissed far too readily for her. No, no, she can’t be going to _dinner_ in a robe, no matter how nice and well-made it is! It simply won’t do, and if she has to borrow a spare dress from the maids, so be it! Lord Highwind was going into town to see about clothes for her, but if he intends on purchasing them – for the idea that he has gone to fetch hers does not occur to her, as she’s wound herself up so much about the whole thing now that logic does not factor into the equation – then she shall have to have him return them! It is enough that he is housing and feeding her, she can’t have him buying _clothes_ for her too!

‘No,’ she tells the teacup, and nearly breaks it slamming it back into its saucer. ‘No, I’m not having it.’

With some effort, she gets back to her feet, and takes a moment to rearrange the robe so that she’s less likely to trip over it before she makes her way to the door. She’s not entirely certain where she intends to go once she reaches it, but she’s halfway down the stairs to seek out a maid when the front doors swing open, and Lord Highwind comes trotting in, backwards, yelling amiably to a steward about making sure the pure black chocobo just beyond the front steps gets a good sand bath for her good work in carting him around. He has a suitcase in one hand and the other gesturing, and the tweed suits him, close to his shoulders and calves and cut in what Shera would assume to be a dashing manner, given the way his backside looks. He’s got a flat cap and long boots, and he’s devastating, she can acknowledge that.

Then he twirls around, buoyed by his successes, halfway through taking his cap off, only to freeze, and stare at her.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he demands, and he’s up the half-flight of stairs to her in the time it takes her to open her mouth.

‘I can’t go to dinner like this,’ she says, and looks at herself.

‘You won’t be going to dinner at all if you stay on that ankle, fuck me.’

He rubs his forehead with the back of his hand, cap crumpled in his fist, and she watches the way his hair frees itself of the wax he’d obviously used in the morning and begins to curl at the edges. It’s the little things that she notices, that draw her attention, and she completely misses the way he looks at her like he wants to do something incredibly unspeakable.

‘What were you even up for? You should have rung for the maids.’

He shoves the suitcase at her, and she struggles to balance herself to get hold of it between the bannister and the cane, and yelps when he scoops her up _again_ , and she’s going to forget how to walk at this rate!

‘I can’t go to dinner like this,’ she says again.

‘So? Why’s that got you hobbling about?’

‘I was,’ she starts, and then flushes deep, hairline to decolletage. ‘I was going to ask a maid to borrow a dress, just for the evening. I’ve imposed too much already, and I – ‘

She stops, because he’s laughing, and it sends a vague something down her spine and into her belly at the sound. It’s not an unkind laugh, low and husky and it makes her think of smoke, which she supposes makes sense, if she stopped to consider it.

‘You’re laughing.’

‘What do you think that case is?’ he asks, still chuckling, and backs them into the Wutai Room. It’s only after the clack of the catch that she realises he’s kicked the door shut behind him.

She looks at it now, properly, as he sets her down on the bed, and recognises it.

‘Oh,’ she says, blinks stupidly.

‘No idea what the maid put in there,’ he says, with a shrug, ‘she just packed some things. Should be a dinner dress in there, eh?’

She pops the catches and opens it up. Not the most flattering of dinner dresses, and no corset, or shift – she supposes the maid assumes that Shera’s are intact, which they may well be. Then, she supposes, her clothes aren’t the most flattering. She’s never bothered to stop and think about them as anything more than clothes to wear, and she’s never had anybody to care about seeing them.

‘You look disappointed,’ he says, and she looks up to find he’s taken his jacket off, and has it slung over his shoulder, his other hand deep in his pocket.

Her mouth goes very dry for a moment, and she swallows, looks back at the dress.

‘Do I?’ she asks, touches her ear, which feels very, very hot. ‘I’m not.’

‘Not the dress you’d have chosen? I dunno, looks a lot fuckin’ better than that monstrosity I found you in.’

‘It was a new dress,’ she murmurs, and he stays silent. ‘My mother had it made especially for that party, so that I would.’ She stops, doesn’t know what to say.

‘Look nice for your suitor? Aye, s’pose you would.’

She chances a glance at him; he’s rifling in his pockets, for his cigarettes, no doubt.

‘You’re used to nicer dresses.’

He shrugs. ‘Never really bothered to look. I know which outfit to put on for which occasion, but I couldn’t give a shit what they look like. Most of ‘em are a few years old, now, from when Ma tried to make me presentable.’

He looks down at himself, like he’s not dressed in very expensive and well-tailored tweed.

‘I’d be happy in the same pair of britches and shirt all week, if I had my way.’

She sighs, softly, and lays the dress out. At least she has her favourite of her blouses, and the blue morning dress the maid packed isn’t the most unflattering thing she’s ever worn. It’s a little simple, and it hangs on her shoulders, because she never could get the bust to fill it out, but that’s what she gets for not growing any in ten years.

‘Hey,’ he says, soft, and she looks up at him to find his eyebrows drawn, mouth twisted.

‘Yes?’

‘You were – did you – you slept alright?’

She nods. ‘I did. I didn’t notice you – you brought the cane through, and took the dog. I didn’t notice.’

A smile touches his lips for a second, and then he shakes his head to clear his expression.

‘Good,’ he says, ‘I didn’t want to wake you, figured you’d need the rest. Looks like you got it, your hair’s a little.’

He breaks off, and reaches out as if to brush her hair back, mussed from sleep and a lock curling against her temple. But before he does, the door raps and opens.

‘I thought perhaps,’ Mrs Wright starts, before stopping. ‘Apologies, My Lord, I didn’t realise you were in here.’

He leaps a foot away from her, hand very resolutely back in its pocket, and he swallows audibly.

‘Mrs Wright,’ he says, startles himself with how loud he says it. ‘Is everything alright?’

Her eyes narrow, just enough, and Shera busies herself with looking through the case, though there’s little else in there except a shawl and, optimistically, a pair of shoes.

‘Fine, My Lord,’ she says, and raises her arms, laden with fabric. ‘I managed to get most of the mud out of Miss Shera’s things, and thought she might like to get some of them.’

Lord Highwind stays stood there for several seconds, and her words hang heavy in the air before she clears her throat and he leaps another foot.

‘Yes, of course, shit – I’ll – fuck – excuse me, I’ll see you at dinner.’

He slams the door behind him, and if Shera strains her ears, she can hear him cursing all the way down the corridor.

Mrs Wright stands there and then heaves a heavy sigh that ruffles a lock of hair at her temple, loosened from its bun.

‘That boy,’ she starts, and then shakes her head. ‘I thought you might like to have something of yours to wear.’

Shera nods, and accepts the items that are offered to her. Her combination, plain and simple with only a couple of little bows at the bust and thighs, is still marked with the dark stain of mud, but Mrs Wright – or one of the maids – has clearly scrubbed it until they could scrub no more, and she supposes that it is better than nothing, and her corset has fared much the same. When she gets back to the house, she’ll have to talk to her mother, and explain the damage, and they’ll order new ones, and that’ll be that.

But for now, it is better than the nothing she has beneath the robe, and Mrs Wright isn’t wrong; it would be nice to wear something of her own.

‘It’s – too early to dress for dinner, isn’t it?’ Shera asks, and Mrs Wright looks at her with a crease in her brow.

‘You can dress whenever you like,’ she says, ‘though it won’t be served until eight.’

‘I think I’d like to get dressed,’ Shera says, and Mrs Wright nods.

* * *

The knock at the door startles her; she’d lost track of time. After helping her dress and fixing the slip in her hair, Mrs Wright had left her to it, and Shera had sat to read. The sun is setting, just about, pink across the horizon, and she’d missed most of it.

‘Yes?’

‘Only me.’

Lord Highwind, of course, and he lets himself in without waiting for an answer.

‘You’re dressed,’ he says, though she is only partially so; her stockings and her dress were unsalvageable, because of course they were, and so she remains barefoot, which is hardly proper.

‘So are you,’ she replies with a raise of her eyebrows.

If the tweed had suited him well, the white tie and tails is positively devastating. The coat fits him well, and the waistcoat sits perfectly across his waist, and even his shoes are shined. But they would be, because that’s the way these things are done. His hair is neatly combed, and his face clean, freshly shaven. It’s a detail she hadn’t expected to notice, and it catches her unawares.

‘My mother insisted,’ he says, ‘she insists that we are civilised, and so here I am, dressed up like a fuckin’ twat.’

‘It suits you,’ she offers, placatingly, because it does.

‘Oh, shut the fuck up,’ he snorts, and extends a small pouch to her. ‘These are yours, left ‘em in my jacket earlier, meant to give them back.’

She blinks at him, and then looks at the pouch and back at him.

‘My spectacles?’ she asks, and slips them out of the leather before jamming them on her face.

They’re big and round, and she supposes there’s no way to make them any less obtrusive than they are, but it feels nice to have everything in focus now. She’d not even really realised it, until now, that she was missing half of her eyesight.

‘Huh,’ the Earl says, and she blinks up at him.

‘What is it?’

‘They suit you,’ is all he says before being decent and remembering to ask her this time before he picks her up.

He smells woodsy, and there’s the tang of soap in his neck as she settles in his arms.

‘Heavier with clothes on,’ he offers, and she opens her mouth to apologise. ‘Corset keeps your back straighter, too.’

‘I’m – sorry?’ she asks, and he snorts, shakes his head. She can count the spattering of freckles on his nose from this distance.

‘It’s not a fault, just an observation, Four-Eyes.’

Lady Rakheim is waiting for them outside of the dining room, dressed in an elegant purple gown, lace high about her neck and hair perfectly arranged. She looks very much like she enjoys the opportunity, and Shera wonders, as Lord Highwind backs his way through the door to avoid hurting her ankle, whether they follow dinner etiquette when they’re alone.

‘You look – nice,’ Lady Rakheim says to Shera as she settles herself in her chair, feeling much more comfortable about her raised leg this time, as her dress obligingly covers most of it, though Lord Highwind’s fingers are still fire along her calf.

‘Thank you,’ she replies, because it’s a perfunctory compliment at best, and she knows it.

The dress is high necked, with puffed sleeves, and whilst it isn’t out of fashion, it is out of the younger lady’s fashion, and more in line with Lady Rakheim’s age. The dark colour and plainness of the embroidery makes her a very frumpy sort of looking girl, and it’s a miracle her parents found her a suitor at all.

‘A trite older than I would have thought for such a young woman,’ Lady Rakheim continues.

‘Mother,’ Lord Highwind warns and goes ignored.

‘I have a wonderful modiste,’ she says, ‘who would be able to make some very fetching dresses for you.’

‘Thank you, My Lady,’ Shera says, ‘but I should decline. I have – I have little need for fetching dresses.’

Lord Highwind is saved from having to interrupt the awkward silence that follows by the arrival of the food, which is delicious, and Shera is not used to being served in such a manner. It reminds her of the dinner at which she’d met her suitor, and she stares at her plate for a moment.

‘What’s the matter?’ Lady Rakheim asks, ‘is something the matter? Cid, is there something on her plate?’

He looks, but Shera shakes her head. ‘No, no, it’s fine. I just – no, it doesn’t matter.’

The Earl and the Countess eye each other for a moment, and then shake their heads in unison and turn to their plates.

After the plates have been taken away, a couple of hours during which Shera has laughed far more than she had at her last formal dinner, Lady Rakheim invites Shera into the drawing room.

‘Nah,’ Lord Highwind interrupts, leaning back on his chair and planet only knows where he got the cigarette in his mouth from. ‘Now she’s got her specs, she’ll want to actually read those books she’s got from the library instead of just pretending.’

Shera’s mouth drops open and she gapes at him for a heartbeat, two, and then her nose wrinkles.

‘I can read just fine without them,’ she says, and tosses her napkin down.

She goes to get to her feet, but lurches upwards too fast, forgetting that one of her feet is not on the floor, and she nearly topples as the chair knocks back away from her. She manages to grab onto the table, but only barely keeps herself upright.

Chuckling, Lord Highwind slams his own chair down and gets up to steady her.

‘I’d say you’d had too much wine, if I didn’t know better.’

She wrenches her arm free of his grip, loose and warm as it is, and takes an unsteady step away from him.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she says to Lady Rakheim, who is staring at her son with an expression she cannot hope to begin to read, she hobbles towards the door.

It’s ungainly, and painful, and the swelling in her ankle makes it slow going, and she wants to cry with each step, but instead she settles for grinding her teeth.

‘You are a fucking idiot,’ she hears Lady Rakheim hiss, but then she’s yanking the door open and stumbling through it.

She’d have made it up the stairs if she’d had the time, but Lord Highwind follows her, cigarette still in his mouth.

‘You gonna do that by yourself?’ he asks, gesturing to the stairs.

‘Go away,’ she snaps, and clutches the bannister with both hands, test her foot against the first tread.

He leans against the newel post and folds his arms, fingertips holding the cigarette.

She makes it three steps, but the fourth makes her ankle buckle and she smashes her knee against the tread. Crying out, she thumps the stairs and then whirls to clutch at her sore knee and then at her ankle, which hurts twice as much and burns like there’s a poker inside it.

‘See,’ Lord Highwind says, and stubs out the cigarette on a tray, conveniently placed on a table by the stairs, presumably for that explicit purpose, ‘my mother tells me I open my mouth without thinking, but I think I’d rather open my fuckin’ mouth than try to walk on a sprained ankle out of spite.’

Shera tries to glare at him, but even through the tears he’s very in focus, and he’s all blue eyes and warm smile. It’s smug, of course, but it’s warm.

‘Do you want help to bed?’ he asks, and she juts her chin before nodding.

‘Please,’ she says, and he comes to help her.

‘Arms around my neck,’ he says, ‘you’re lower than normal.’

They accidentally bang noses as he gets his arms around her, and the laugh startles out of her, cutting off as abruptly as it started by the expression on his face.

‘What?’

‘First time I think you’ve laughed,’ he says, and pushes up to his feet.

The position means she can’t untangle her arms from around his neck, and it presses her brow against his jaw and she – she – she –

She doesn’t really want to move.

Safely in the Wutai Room, he sets her on the bed and goes to pull the bell-pull.

‘I’ll have Mrs Wright come to look at that ankle,’ he says, and crosses back to her.

‘I can read without my spectacles,’ she says, adamant.

‘I’m sure,’ he replies, and his hand braces against the bed for a moment, his body leaning in for a second, two.

For half a second, she thinks he’s going to kiss her, but the door opens, and he rocks back onto his heels, looking like there was nothing in his movement to suggest he was doing more than making for the door.

‘Goodnight,’ he says, and Shera watches him go.

The room feels oddly cold without him in it, and she realises, on undressing with the maid’s help, that there was no nightdress in the case.

‘Of course not,’ she sighs, and slams it shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the next chapter, I think we're going to get a bit of a Something There moment, watch this space.


	5. Lord Palmer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost a week has passed, and Shera's healing fine. But then Lord Palmer arrives and things take a turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slow burn beginning to bubble
> 
> enjoy my lovelies~!

‘Telegram for you, sir,’ says a footman at the door, and Cid heaves a sigh, looks up from where he’s pretending to sleep to gesture the chap in.

He’s taken to spending a few hours every morning in the Wutai Room with Shera while she reads or sketches or stares out of the window and thinks things he couldn’t begin to comprehend. She’s quiet, for the most part, and he appreciates that, because it means he can catch up on sleep he lost during the night. He’s never been a good sleeper, but his mother would have his guts if she caught him sleeping in the day, so he takes the opportunity where he can get it. And Shera doesn’t seem to mind, too absorbed in whatever she chooses to do. Sometimes, he catches her sleeping, too, and he watches her for a few minutes at a time when she does, admires the lines of her form, the way her lips part, the flutter of her eyelashes.

She’s in the robe again today; one of the maids had taken her combination a few evenings ago to wash it ready for the next day, given that she had only the one, and it had not returned. She’d been upset about it, and his mother had pressed one of the maids to lend her a shift while she ordered a new set of underthings for her. Shera had been mortified to accept it, but the Countess had insisted; her affects had been lost on their property, and so it was only right she replaced them.

Cid, who had seen a very small figure flittering about the place the morning of that same evening, knows better than to think the whole thing hadn’t been manufactured by his mother. The little Wutaian sneak has been a pest for several years now, but he can’t fault her commitment to her craft. Considering she is meant to be royalty, he envies the freedom she has, a little.

She’d probably say the same if they managed to have a conversation about it.

Either way, Shera is in the robe today, and she adjusts it as she sits a little straighter, doing her best to look presentable as the footman approaches with the telegram, though Cid can’t say he minds the glimpse of collar he gets before she tightens the neckline. She’s gotten used to its folds and flaps and flounces, and has mastered the art of adjusting them to best suit her, which is probably for the best. She’s been here for nearly a week now, which in itself is not a problem; the things her presence does to his health is a growing issue and he’s not particularly fond of the way he’s finding himself seeking her out. Her company is good, certainly, and when she has good opinions on things like mechanics and electricity, they’re fascinating to listen to. But that doesn’t mean he enjoys the way his heart tightens.

Ha, heart. Be honest with yourself, Cid.

‘Thank you,’ he says, and the footman leaves.

He leaves the door open, which is how they’ve agreed upon it; Cid being here without a chaperone is entirely improper, but at least with the footfall of a morning, there’s little chance for impropriety.

‘You don’t often get telegrams,’ Shera offers, setting her book down and pouring them both a fresh cup of tea from the pot on the table between them.

Cid elects not to tell her about the drape of the robe over her décolletage as she leans forward.

‘Not in the morning,’ he says, ‘if someone has something important to say, it’s usually in the evening after you’ve retired. Fuckers like keeping me up at night with their songs and dances.’

She passes the tea across to him as he thumbs the telegram open. Their fingers brush. He tries not to shiver.

‘Oh, for fuck sake,’ he says as he reads it, and heaves a sigh.

Safely on her side of the table again, Shera holds her tea in both hands, a barrier. Her eyebrows knot behind the rims of her spectacles, and he, not for the first time, wants to kiss the purse of her lips.

‘What is it?’

‘Lord Palmer,’ he says, ‘little fat bastard, right up the Prince’s fucking arse. He’s a pain in _my_ arse whenever he shows up, which he always does without warning. Fuck sake, he’s coming through the area, hopes to – ahem – _prevail upon me for a bed for the night, and maybe dinner_. Fucking prick.’

‘Lord Palmer?’ Shera asks, looking into her cup. ‘I know the name.’

‘He’s not worth the thought,’ Cid assures her, and crumples the note. ‘Ugh, I’d better go let Mrs Noreika know.’

He downs his tea and gets to his feet.

‘I probably won’t come back up,’ he admits. He can feel the tug in his chest at the thought, knows it’s written on his face. ‘I’ll have to sort all this shit out now.’

And off he stomps, leaving Shera to her tea, and the view from the window, and the aching loneliness of not having him in the room.

He calls by the drawing room to see his mother, who is as disheartened by the prospect of Lord Palmer’s visit as he is, and then he heads for the servant’s stairs to go and tell the staff.

It’s not often that he goes below stairs; Wright has everything under control for the most part, and what he doesn’t, they manage to sort out amongst themselves, which means Cid has little need to go into their territory to talk to them.

Mrs Wright is sat at the kitchen table, peeling apples when he reaches the kitchen, and she jerks to her feet when he raps on the door.

‘Fuck off,’ he says, ‘sit down, you’re not in trouble. You seen Ana?’

It was something he’d never quite managed to control, calling his staff by their first names. The vast majority of them had been in the house since he was a young boy, and in the wake of his father’s passing, his mother had let them become a second family to him. Planet knew he’d needed it as a boy, adrift without purpose and with too much responsibility. As an adult, he’d done his best to present himself as an Earl, as the head of a grand old house, but the staff were still as much his family as his mother.

‘No,’ Mrs Wright replies, ‘not for a half-hour. She’d been going to the ice house, last I saw of her, wanting to top up the cold store before she makes a start on preparations for dinner. Why do you ask? Was something wrong with breakfast?’

Shera’s breakfast, she means, because Cid would be lucky to eat a round of toast, never mind anything close to substantial.

‘No, no, it was fine, same as always. No, I just got a telegram, that fat fuck Palmer’s coming to stay for the night.’

Mrs Wright almost throws the peeler and apple, her hands jerk that hard with the sigh that leaves her.

‘Can he not warn us?’ she exclaims, and tosses the apple into the pail to rub her face.

‘No!’ Cid replies, and checks for Wright before digging into his pockets for a cigarette. ‘No, he can’t!’

He’s halfway through the cigarette when he realises that Shera is upstairs.

‘Oh, shit,’ he says on an exhale, choking on the smoke in his nose, ‘we’ve got to keep him away from Shera.’

‘Keep who away from Miss Crescent?’ Wright asks, appearing behind Cid so soundlessly that Cid leaps a mile and nearly swallows the stub of his cigarette.

‘Fuck sake, John!’ he spits, and tosses the stub into the fire, ‘stop doing that!’

‘Palmer, John,’ Mrs Wright says with a look resembling disgust. ‘He’s once again prevailing upon us.’

‘That was the word he used,’ Cid tells her, and she snorts.

‘I don’t think he knows another way to beg,’ she replies. ‘Still, he expects food and entertainment, no doubt.’

Wright thinks about this for a moment, and then nods. ‘Miss Crescent must be kept from him,’ he agrees, ‘for her sanity if nothing else.’

‘Forget her sanity,’ Cid scoffs, ‘think about what he’ll tell every Tom, Dick and Harry on his way to wherever the fuck he’s going! I don’t give a shit, but he’ll pin her in a corner with everyone before he’s finished opening his mouth.’

Mrs Wright raises her eyebrow at him, and he studiously ignores it until he opens his mouth again a second later.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘I’m not going to let her reputation be ruined by some fat twaddling little shitstain thinking that he knows more than he does and start spouting off about how I’m going to marry her or just make some kind of – of – I’m certainly not sending her home with her reputation ruined.’

Mrs Wright’s eyebrow remains raised, and Wright moves so that Cid can’t see the grin he’s hiding behind his hand. Fuckers, the pair of them.

‘I’m an asshole,’ he tries next, even waving his hand at them like it’ll help. ‘And I know that, but she’s an innocent party, and I’m doing my job as the head of the county to look after her after she was injured on my property, and stop looking at me like that, I am trying to be a decent human being for five minutes.’

‘Nobody is doubting you’re a decent human being,’ Wright assures him.

‘You’ll have to explain what Palmer is to her, then,’ Mrs Wright says, and Cid turns a plaintive look to her.

‘Can’t you do it?’ he asks, ‘you’ll be up there to help her in the bath in a bit, just – tell her. For me.’

Mrs Wright snorts, and tells him to go away in a much unkinder way.

* * *

It isn’t out of spite that Mrs Wright very much does _not_ tell Shera about Palmer when she goes to help the girl in and out of the bath without breaking her neck, but more – the Earl is a grown man and having seen the way he looks at the young Miss when he thinks nobody can see him, which is a fool’s assumption on his part, she thinks he should be able to face her and talk to her like the civilised man his mother desperately needs him to pretend to be. So she says nothing.

Not that Shera asks, she’s much more interested in knowing how much longer she’s going to have to live in the robe again.

‘I’d never thought I’d miss my clothes,’ she admits as Mrs Wright rinses out her hair. ‘But I was so grateful to have them back.’

‘You can still wear them, Miss,’ Mrs Wright reminds her, and indeed, Shera will be dressed after this.

‘But it isn’t the same to borrow someone else’s shift.’

Mrs Wright concedes that this is true; in their younger years, before they gained their positions as heads of their departments, she and Ana had swapped clothes on several occasions, and it had never felt the same.

‘The ones My Lady ordered should be with us by the weekend,’ she says instead, a consolation.

‘I hope so,’ Shera sighs, and takes Mrs Wright’s hands to help her stand.

* * *

Shera is in the drawing room with Lady Rakheim when Lord Palmer arrives. They’re playing some board game or other, and Shera is not very good at it, forgetting what piece goes where and when, but Lady Rakheim is taking it good-naturedly and Shera is very eager to learn. Cid’s been stood by the window, since it faces onto the courtyard, listening to his mother patiently explain the rules to their guest with the kindness of one talking to a particularly errant child, and he’s bitten his lip enough to keep the smile back that he’s torn skin from it. She’s sweet, in a way he never expected to think a girl could be sweet, and as she huffs, toppling her main piece to declare her loss, the car draws up.

‘Fuck it,’ Cid grunts, pushing away from the wall. ‘John!’

Wright comes as if Cid’s holler had summoned him, when in reality they both know he was already on his way.

‘Yes, My Lord?’

For a moment, Cid is frozen. He should be there to greet Lord Palmer, but who gets Shera out of the way? He can’t ask his mother to do it.

‘Stall him,’ he says, ‘talk about the car, or the weather in the sands, whatever.’

Wright raises a brow, and then turns back to the front doors to go and do as bid.

Shera looks over her shoulder to where Cid is staring out of the window, scowl on his face.

‘Do you dislike him that much?’ she asks, and the laugh in her voice is nervous, unsure.

Cid grunts, and Lady Rakheim harrumphs. 

‘Palmer is a cretin,’ Lady Rakheim says, scooping the pieces back into their bag. ‘The kind that follows blindly with no loyalty. If there were a coup tomorrow, he’d side with the winner and act like he’d always done so. The Midgar court is full of them now.’

Cid nods, and extends his hands in the now-familiar position to scoop Shera up. She could, if she needed, hobble about now, but she can see the urgency in his eyes.

‘Why do I need to be hidden?’ she asks, obligingly looping an arm around Cid’s neck so he can lift her.

The front doors are shut when they leave the drawing room, and Cid doesn’t hesitate to make for the stairs.

‘It’s not that I’m hiding you,’ he says, and his jaw is very, very tight. ‘I just – I don’t want him anywhere near you.’

Shera considers this, and decides that if such a thing were so abhorrent to Lord Highwind, then it probably meant it was much worse than that, and agrees that she probably should be away from him.

‘But,’ she asks, as he bends his knees so she can slip out of his arms and onto her feet, using him as a support until she can hobble to the chair, ‘what are we going to do for dinner?’

Cid stares at her, and she stares back.

‘You have thought about that?’ she asks, ‘I will meet him then, and it will look very odd that he wasn’t introduced to me sooner.’

‘Shit!’

It bursts out of him without thought, and he swears all the way down the corridor, leaving Shera somewhat baffled and a little concerned.

* * *

Cid is still swearing as he jumps down the stairs, three at a time before skidding across the floor.

‘You’re thirty-two!’ his mother exclaims, and Cid wheels around to look at her.

‘Dinner,’ he says, in the kind of intense voice you use when you realise you have forgotten to turn the oven off ten miles from home.

Lady Rakheim shuts her eyes in a manner that suggests she’s had the exact same thought that her son has had, and she click-clacks her way off towards the kitchen stairs. Cid meanwhile, throws the front doors wide and plasters something resembling a smile on his face, but knows by the ache in his jaw that it’s more likely a grimace.

‘Lord Palmer!’ he enthuses, sounds too loud to his own ears, and the little fat man rounds on him.

‘Finally!’ he exclaims, and rushes up the stairs, as much as he can rush, to grab Cid’s very much not-outstretched hands. ‘I was just asking your man what could possibly be keeping you!’

‘The dog, you know,’ Cid replies airily, though the look he shoots Wright is anything but light, ‘gets underfoot and causes all sorts of hassle. Tripped a maid, there was glass all over the floor, you know how it is.’

Lord Palmer, who could not be trusted with a houseplant, never mind a pet, does not know how it is, and Cid knows this. He can feel the headache mounting behind his left eye already.

‘What brings you out this way?’ he asks, gestures for them to head inside. ‘Wright, bring the Lord a drink, I’m sure he’s thirsty after his long journey.’

‘Oh, you know,’ Lord Palmer says, aiming for the same breeziness Cid had affected and missing by a solid half-mile. He just sounds out of breath and sycophantic. ‘Business for the Prince. He’s been asking after you, he hasn’t seen you in so long.’

Cid very much doubts that Prince Rufus has been asking after him; the last time they met had been not long after Cid’s introduction to the court as the Earl of Rakheim, and it had gone about as well as his mother had expected it to go; not very well at all. No doubt, she’d said as they rode home in the carriage later that evening, no doubt the entire court would assume she’d gotten to her son the way she’d gotten to her husband.

This, Cid assumes, is a visit to test his allegiance to the throne. Make sure he’s not a copy of his mother with a bigger dick. Though the stories he’s heard of the things his mother did before her marriage to his father curtailed a lot of her freedoms, he’s not sure his measures up.

One of the joys of wedding late, his mother had told him as a boy, when he’d found the photographs of her in Wutai, arm-in-arm with the then-Lady of Wutai, grandmother of the current princess roaming his halls and wreaking havoc with his guest’s underwear, is that she had time to cultivate friendships. Once you are married, it’s harder to do. No, no, best to remain free as long as possible.

‘I’ll make sure to visit Midgar soon,’ Cid says, which ends that particular conversation.

Lady Rakheim returns from the kitchens via the dining room, thank the planet, and she has the same grimace on her face that Cid can feel aching in his cheeks.

‘Lord Palmer,’ she enthuses, as sycophantically as she probably feels she can dare pretend to be, ‘how _nice_ it is to see you again!’

‘It is _lovely_ to see you too, My Lady. You look as ravishing as ever.’

That’s my fucking mother, Cid thinks, but doesn’t say, because despite opinions to the contrary, he was raised with some fucking manners.

Palmer kisses her hands in a way that makes Lady Rakheim’s jaw twitch, and Cid does not miss the way she wipes them on her skirt as she gestures towards the sitting room.

‘I assume tea shall be along shortly?’ she asks her son, leading the way.

‘I sent Wright on his way only a minute ago,’ he replies, and looks to the stairs as they pass, finds himself longing to return to the morning, to his blissful ignorance of this sweaty, stinking tub of lard waddling in front of him, to being in the Wutai Room with a very pretty girl in very few clothes, peacefully ignoring him so that he could look at her without being caught.

How ignorant he was, to think he’d get more than he’s had of it.

‘Tell me, My Lady,’ Palmer says as they sit, and Cid goes for the window seat, wonders how impolite it is, and deciding he doesn’t care, ‘how have you been?’

Cid tunes them out; his mother has always been better at the small talk bullshit than he has, and she’s happy to regale him with tales of the town, and the events and the minutiae of her health. She’s not getting any younger, of course, and her hip is hurting now more than ever, but she’s not one to complain, not when they have such a skilled carver in the town to make beautiful canes for her to use.

Wright arrives with tea and scones with butter and jam and Cid looks at him as he puts the tray down.

‘Ah, Wright,’ he says as the butler straightens, ‘I need to discuss something with you.’

He offers a perfunctory bow to Palmer, who is too busy slathering butter on the baked good to notice, and heads for the door.

Out in the hall, he wheels on Wright.

‘I didn’t think about dinner,’ he whispers, rubs his face, ‘the fuck are we going to do about Shera?’

‘I believe Lady Rakheim went and discussed the issue with the kitchens. She will simply have to eat in her room, My Lord.’

‘That’s not fair to her, she really enjoys the bullshit of dinner.’

And she does; after that first almost-argument they’d had that very first dinner, Shera had come to really enjoy the rigmarole and palaver that is the dinner process with its many courses and its dress code and the late nights sitting up with them until she starts to drift off against his shoulder.

Fine, perhaps the last was more his enjoyment than hers, but still! She enjoyed the food, and seemed to enjoy the company, and she certainly seemed to enjoy asking over and over again why they needed so many different forks, and he hates to deny it to her now.

‘I know, My Lord, but what choice is there? She will understand, and it is only for one night.’

Cid rubs his eyes hard enough that he sees stars.

‘Will you send one of the maids to tell her?’ he asks, ‘I can’t leave that motherfucker alone.’

Wright looks at him like he’s entirely stupid, not just partially, and shakes his head.

‘I’ll ask,’ he says, and plods off towards the stairs.

* * *

Cid is sure that Shera must be bored shitless, but that does _not_ mean she can hobble her way to the library, putting her in full view of the hall just as Lord Palmer insists on being shown his room so that he can bathe and change ready for dinner.

‘Well,’ Lord Palmer is saying as he waddles towards the stairs, ‘I’ll see myself off. Am I staying in the Wutai Room again?’

Three things happen at once. Cid finds a too-loud ‘no!’ exploding out of him, Shera nearly trips over herself at the shock of his yell, and Lord Palmer turns to face him by the way of the stairs. Shera is frozen for a moment, and Cid doesn’t know what to do to stop him turning.

‘No?’ Lord Palmer asks, and Cid looks over his head at Shera with the desperation born of a man trapped. She stares at him and he tilts his head slightly, a move on that she _thankfully_ reads and off she hobbles.

‘No, there’s, there’s – there’s been a leak, in the en-suite. We’ll have you put up in the Gold Suite, instead. The tub in there is bigger.’

It’s an insult, but not one Lord Palmer hears.

‘Oh, jolly good,’ he warbles, ‘that car was very hot, and you keep this place too closed up, there’s no air.’

‘You’ll be able to open the doors of the suite,’ Cid assures him as he leads him up the stairs.

Dragon trots across the hallway towards the library, where Shera has left the door open. Palmer makes a noise of disgust at it.

‘I don’t understand how you keep a dog,’ he huffs, more from lack of breath than any indignance, ‘dirty, smelly creatures.’

Given how often the dog gets bathed – more, Cid thinks, than he himself bathes – he is safe to assume that Dragon is neither.

‘I don’t believe so, sir,’ he grits out, and gestures down the hall. ‘The Gold Suite is the third on your right.’

He waits to make sure Palmer reaches the room and goes inside, and then turns on his heels and storms to the library.

As soon as he’s through the door, he slams it behind him, and it makes Shera, bent at the waist to scratch behind Dragon’s ears, leap a mile. Clutching her heart, she whirls to face him.

‘Sir!’ she exclaims, and he continues his storming over to her, toe-to-toe and holding her arms very tightly indeed. ‘You’re holding me too tight.’

‘What were you thinking?’ he demands, ‘you could have been _seen_!’

She stares at him in aplomb. ‘Seen? You – I don’t understand.’

‘If that fat fuck sees you, do you _know_ what he will assume? He’ll assume that I’ve found – found – that we’re going to marry, and he will tell _everyone_. It won’t matter that you’re here to recover from an injury, it won’t matter about your suitor back home, it _won’t fucking matter._ He will _tell everyone_.’

He’s drawn her closer as he’s talked, until they’re flush from knee to chest, barely a hair’s breadth between them, and he can feel the brush of her nose on his, the heat of her breath as her lips part in confusion. Fuck, he wants to kiss those lips, and the sudden force of that want surprises him.

Oh, he’s felt inclined before, because he’s always inclined to want to kiss a pretty woman when she’s being pretty. Doesn’t mean he’s wanted to act on it, to _actually_ kiss her. But from the bottom of his gut to the pain in his temple, he wants to kiss her.

And he thinks he could, the fluttering of her lashes, and the way her gaze flickers across his face, settles on his mouth for a heartbeat, the way she’s not pulling away – no, no, he’d go as far as to say she’s leaning _in_ – it all makes him think he could.

She’d let him. Fuck, she might even kiss him back.

‘Oh,’ she says, quietly. ‘I didn’t know.’

Which breaks the spell, and he jerks a step back, blinking rapidly and trying not to see the disappointment that flashes across her face for a second before being schooled back into confusion.

‘You’ll be safe to get back into your room,’ he tells her, gentle, smooths his hands down the creases in her sleeves, ‘but you can’t come out again.’

She frowns at him now.

‘But surely if we explain to him – my ankle is still bandaged, and the swelling isn’t much better - ’

‘Probably because you insist on pissing about on it,’ Cid grumbles, and she ignores him.

‘ – So it’s really obvious that I’m injured, and my parents can vouch for that, and your mother can attest as a chaperone. Nothing untoward has happened, and it won’t, and surely if we just _explain_ that?’

‘No!’ he explodes again, and she flinches, surprised at the volume as much as he is. ‘No, Palmer’s a fucking idiot, it won’t matter if you write it down in language a blind _child_ could understand, he’ll still see it as a pretty woman in my house with no chaperone, and he’ll run with it from there. Just stay in your room, I’ve had Wright tell Ana to send a maid up to you with dinner.’

Shera stares at him then, and he sees the first flicker of a refusal in her eyes. She’s not a very strong-willed creature – strong-minded, sure, but not willed, and by her own admission, jumping the gate into the woods was the first reckless thing she can remember doing. But she’s got the look of refusing him now.

‘Shera,’ he says, and notices the pink in her ears, tries not to think about it, ‘listen to me. It’s _one night_. I’m asking for you, not for me. I don’t give a shit if you’re there or not, I know the truth of why you’re here. But I know this fucker, and I know what he’ll do, and what he’ll think. Just this one thing, fuck sake.’

She doesn’t answer, just stares at him some more. He takes her silence for acquiescence, and nods, calls Dragon to heel, and leaves her in the library. The coast is clear, and he assumes she makes it back alright.

* * *

The dinner gong goes, more for Lord Palmer’s sake than anyone else’s, and Cid goes to his chambers to change. It’s funny, he thinks, as his valet comes to help him, despite Cid being perfectly capable of dressing himself – let them, his mother would chide, it’s their job and it’s one less thing for you to do – but his bedroom feels colder than usual, despite its fire and its warm woods and red upholstery. He supposes, as he lifts his chin so that the valet can fiddle with his tie, that he still, deep in his bones, wants to be back in the Wutai Room half a day ago. Blue though it is, the Wutai Room feels warmer than anything else.

‘Thank you,’ he says, when he’s been brushed down, ‘that’ll be all.’

He intends to make his way downstairs, so that he’s ready for Lord Palmer as soon as he makes his way down, and they can get into the dining room – and out again – as soon as possible. But he finds himself lingering on the gallery, looking across the corridor at where the Wutai Room door is shut. He hasn’t heard a peep from Shera since, and Mrs Wright has told him, collaring him before he made his way upstairs to change, that the maids taking her tea have said she’s been reading quietly, content enough by all accounts.

This is a relief; that moment in the library, he’d not been sure what to make of it.

He lingers too long; a door opens and Palmer emerges. Fuck sake.

‘Ah, Lord Palmer,’ Cid says, plastering his aching grimace back on. ‘I was going to go down to wait for you. I’ve had Wright bring out the brandy.’

Lord Palmer looks flushed as he waddles over and they begin to make their way downstairs.

‘Oh, dear,’ he says, ‘brandy goes straight to my head, I’m afraid.’

That is what Cid had known, hence why he ordered it be put out.

‘Oh,’ he says, and his mother would chide him for how poorly he fakes contrition. ‘I don’t know what else we have in. We’re more tea drinkers.’

Palmer can’t stand tea without three sugar cubes and something with butter to go alongside it.

In the drawing room, Palmer talks about shit that Cid doesn’t care about; the Prince, and the goings-on in Midgar, and all the things Palmer thinks should happen. Cid doesn’t listen except to hear the pauses where he should nod and agree, and Palmer puffs up with pride at thinking he’s commanding an Earl’s attention. Cid lets him have it, because it’s easier than the awkwardness of sitting in silence waiting on his mother.

As soon as she’s down, he’ll insist they go through; the sooner the first dish is served, the sooner they can serve dessert and Cid can let his headache rest.

* * *

Shera watches the clock on the mantel from when she hears the gong. It was hard doing her corset herself, but she managed, just about, even if the knot isn’t the neatest. She’d struggled with the buttons for her dress, too, but she’d gotten herself dressed before now, and she’s presentable enough. She’s barefoot and using a cane, she’s got to be allowed some lack of decorum in this.

Which is hardly her fault, as she gets to her feet as the clock reaches almost eight, because Lord Highwind had told her to stay put, to not be seen. Hiding from this Lord Palmer, who was an odious-looking little man, seemed to her to be less logical a choice.

She’s not an impulsive creature, but she finds herself flinging the door of her room open anyway, because she’d been explicitly told _not_ to go, and she wants to prove him wrong. He’d almost kissed her in the library, she was sure of it.

Less sure of whether she wanted him to or not, but the tingle in her lips, the flip-flop of heat in her belly, she thinks that means something.

He’d almost kissed her, and she’d wanted him to, and she wouldn’t have said no, and so she makes her way down the stairs. She’s gotten better at backing-and-forthing to the library, but she hasn’t really managed the stairs by herself. The first few at the bottom, maybe, before Lord Highwind picks her up, but she’s determined. She’ll be late into dinner, but better late than never.

At the bottom of the stairs, she passes an footman bringing up a dish, and a kitchen maid taking one back into the kitchen. The three of them exchange glances; Shera straightens her shoulders. Look like you belong, she thinks to herself, then they won’t question it.

Outside of the dining room, she takes a breath; her ankle is throbbing something chronic, pain churning in her stomach, and she’s not entirely sure she could eat anything now, but she’s here, and she needs to – to – all she has to do is open the door. Lord Highwind wouldn’t turn her away if she was _right there_ , and they could explain it all to Lord Palmer, and it would be fine!

She nods to herself, and raises her hand to open the door when her name gets called, sharp and quiet.

Mrs Noreika, her apron well-worn and flour-dusted and sauce-damp, wiping her hands on it. Shera has only met her once, but knows her by sight, the greying black of her hair sleek and shining and swept neatly into a bun, her features somehow old enough to know better and young enough not to care, making it impossible to guess at her fifty-something years.

Shera flushes, and then straightens her shoulders again, aware they’d been rolling in.

‘Go back to your room!’ Mrs Noreika says, and checks the corridor before coming up to grab her elbow. ‘You can’t go in there.’

‘Says who?’ Shera hisses back, because apparently they’re being quiet about this. She can hear conversation in the dining room, indistinct but loud enough.

‘You know damn well that Lord Highwind’s told you to have your dinner in your bedroom,’ the cook says, and tries to gently yank Shera away from the door.

It doesn’t really work, and so Shera stays put.

‘I don’t understand why,’ she snipes, even though she does understand why.

Lord Palmer will ruin her reputation, make her out to be some – some – clergyman’s daughter! She’s a doctor’s daughter, but that’s besides the point! The Earl is a respectable man, at least when it comes to her – well. He hasn’t any designs on her like that, she’s sure, and she knows that when he says Lord Palmer won’t hear of it and will tell everyone, she knows that he’ll do worse than that.

But she’s sure that he’ll listen to reason, he has to, because men are reasonable, on the whole.

‘Miss Crescent,’ Mrs Noreika says, very insistently.

‘I’m going in there,’ Shera replies, because of course she does.

She gets her hand on the door handle, but then Mrs Noreika yanks harder, and it takes Shera off-balance, giving her the edge she needs to start dragging her towards the kitchen. It’s a reasonable enough place to drag her, Shera will suppose later; she needs to finish the food, and it isn’t like Lord Palmer will go down there to see the other guest of Galaeth House. But in the moment, all Shera can think about is how much it hurts her ankle to be dragged so, and then – and then –

She trips. Of course she trips, it’s what she seems to be best at doing. She trips on the steps down to the kitchen, and lands badly on her ankle, and the hoarse screech that leaves her mouth would have made an eagle envious. Mrs Noreika starts cursing up a storm, because of course she does. Thankfully, Shera’s only tripped down a couple of the steps before catching herself, so the worst of it is the fresh damage to her ankle, which she clutches and cries about, and Mrs Noreika stands a few steps below her, swearing almost as well as the Earl does.

‘Alda,’ Mrs Noreika barks, and a maid appears at the bottom of the stairs, ‘I need ice and a towel, now.’

The maid nods, and scurries off.

‘Fuck,’ Mrs Noreika says, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Ana?’ comes Mrs Wright’s voice from the top of the stairs behind them, ‘what on – Shera?’

‘I tripped,’ Shera sobs, and Mrs Wright makes her way down the stairs to detangle Shera from her skirts so she can look at the ankle, still bandaged, but very purple and yellow and blue beneath.

‘The fuck is going on?’ demands Lord Highwind from behind Mrs Wright.

‘For fuck sake,’ Mrs Noreika says.

The maid appears, ice in a bucket, a towel in her other hand.

Lord Highwind makes his way down the stairs as Mrs Noreika goes down the other half to fetch the items, passing them across to Mrs Wright.

‘What the fuck happened?’ Lord Highwind asks, looking too tall on the steps above Shera, on her backside and weeping.

‘I tripped,’ she repeats, and Mrs Wright somehow manages to get into a position that Shera’s ankle is elevated and in her lap at the same time.

‘You tripped?’ Lord Highwind echoes, ‘the fuck were you doing in the servant stairwell? I said they’d bring it up to you.’

He sounds furious, and he has every right to be. Shera buries her face in her hands. Mrs Wright tuts as she unwinds the bandage.

‘And why the fuck are you dressed? You were in your room, you could have stayed as you were.’

‘Oh, Cid,’ Mrs Wright sighs, hissing a little at the sting of the ice she wraps in the towel, laying it over Shera’s ankle. ‘Isn’t it _obvious_? Leave the poor girl alone, I’ll get John to help me take her back upstairs.’

‘Cid?’ His mother now, at the top of the stairs.

‘One of the maids tripped!’ he says, so loudly it’s a miracle he’s not shouting. ‘She’s alright! Just a sprained ankle!’

Lady Rakheim hesitates for a moment, and then retreats. She understands, and she’ll keep Lord Palmer occupied, not, Cid’s sure, that he’s looked up from his plate since Cid leapt to his feet at the first breath of the scream.

‘No,’ he says, to Mrs Wright. ‘I’ll take her up, John’s in the dining room. You’ll have to look after her.’

‘I’m fine,’ Shera sniffles, even though she clearly isn’t, and feels like she’s going to throw up. ‘I got down the stairs, I’ll get up them.’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up,’ Lord Highwind snorts, and carefully picks his way down onto the steps she’s on so he can get her into his arms.

Mrs Wright steadies her ankle as they manoeuvre, and she says, ‘it’d be best to take the servant stairwells, in case Palmer comes out.’

‘He won’t, and it’ll be quicker on the main stairs,’ Lord Highwind refutes, ‘it’s too narrow in the stairwells, I’ll only crack her ankle on something else.’

Shera buries her face in her hands so that the movement doesn’t sway her too much, because he’s not being smooth about his gait this time.

‘You’re such a fucking idiot,’ he snaps as he walks, ‘the fuck were you thinking?’

‘I just thought,’ she starts, and he barks a laugh.

‘No, you fucking didn’t, Shera.’

Again, a trickle of heat down her spine, a thump of her heart against her ribs. No man except her father calls her by her name, and she’s embarrassed that it gets her attention at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and he backs into the Wutai Room.

‘Whatever,’ he grunts, sets her down on the bed, fusses with the pillows for a moment so that he can get one underneath her ankle, though it doesn’t raise it in the least. ‘Just stay here for the rest of the night. The maid will bring you dinner.’

‘I don’t think I could eat,’ she admits, holds her stomach as if it might quell the churning.

‘Then starve, fuck it, I don’t care. I’ll be back up after dinner, fucking hell. Thank fuck he’s a lightweight, he’ll sleep all this off if he paid attention at all.’

Shera stares at her hands in her lap, and he leaves with another huff of breath.

She’s crying again by the time Mrs Wright arrives with the ice and towel and a tray of tea.

* * *

When dinner is _finally_ over, Cid having lost his appetite the moment he heard Shera scream – and the fact he’d known it was her terrifies him. He’s never heard her scream in his life, and yet he knows it as well as he knows his own voice, and why is that? Fuck knows, but a dinner is not the time to think about it – he leaves John with his mother and Lord Palmer to go through to the drawing room for five minutes before his mother begs sleep and retires, and he goes up the stairs to the Wutai Room.

Shera doesn’t answer the knock, but he lets himself in anyway, and finds her asleep. She’d clearly not been intending to fall asleep, sat in the chair by the window, an open book on her lap, her ankle on a stool, freshly bandaged and swollen more than it had been those first few days. He wonders, as he stands there and watches her, whether it’s broken.

Surely not, it hadn’t been out of shape when Reine had put ice on it, so more likely she put too much weight on it tripping down the stairs, which she shouldn’t have been on in the first place, because she should have been in her room.

Fucking idiot.

He glances back at the corridor; nobody there, but he can’t leave her like this. He could ring the bell. Ringing the bell would be the sensible thing to do. A maid would come, and she could shake Shera awake, get her undressed and into bed.

Instead, he does the stupidest thing he’s done in several years and drops to a crouch next to her, rests a hand on hers, teases the book from between her fingers.

‘Whassit?’ Shera slurs.

‘Only me,’ he whispers back, ‘come on, you need to get to bed.’

Her eyes are barely open, and when they are, it’s only for a second at a time. She nods, though it’s more a hang of her head, and he watches her, her cheeks mottled a little; a blush? Or just where she’s cried?

He heaves a sigh. He should call for the maid.

Instead, he shakes her arm, gentle, and she stirs again.

‘Help me,’ he says, and she blinks at him.

‘’Kay,’ she breathes, and she doesn’t seem awake enough to think about the fact he’s unbuttoning her dress.

She clutches his arms to stand, nearly topples into his chest as they try to work out how to get her to step out of the dress without putting weight on her ankle. In the end he grabs under her arms and lifts, and she wriggles her legs until the dress falls free. In her corset and her shift, she’s too close. She smells of the citrus of the soap the maid had given her, fresh and clean and _girl_ and he breathes her hair in as she rests against him.

‘Hurts,’ she sighs, and he nods, peels her away and guides her hands to the corset.

‘You need to take this off,’ he says, and she tries, it’s clear that she’s trying – trying his fucking patience! – but she’s not awake enough to manage.

It’s easy enough to undo, considering, the hooks at the front giving under the slightest pressure. He doesn’t understand the appeal at all, appreciates the figure it helps a woman cut, but he doesn’t understand why they put themselves through it.

In just her shift, he hates himself for looking. The light from the corridor and from the moon outside highlights the gape of the shift against her frame, slim and shapeless and yet still, he knows, it’ll fit against him like it was meant to.

It’s cold in the room, too, though he wouldn’t know with his tails.

‘Come on,’ he whispers, gentle, and ducks under her loose arm, sweeps her up to carry her the few feet to the bed. ‘You need to sleep, and I suppose we’ll talk about what a fucking idiot you are in the morning.’

‘Suppose,’ she agrees, and obligingly goes still as he fusses with cushions and pillows, making sure her ankle is supported and raised.

He glances back at her as he draws the covers to her chin. She’s asleep already, had probably not been awake the entire time.

He huffs out a laugh and brushes a strand of hair from her face. Her spectacles are already on the table with the now-cold tea tray, and he leaves them there, but does go and pick her dress up. He’s overdue a visit to Midgar. He’ll leave in the morning, he thinks, before Lord Palmer gets up, and he’ll take that dress with him, speak to that really nice modiste at the market, the one who doesn’t ask questions about who these things are for, just that the measurements are correct.

Yes, he thinks, and casts another glance at her, brow creased, lips parted, but breathing deep and even, that’ll do just fine.

‘Goodnight,’ he says, though she doesn’t stir, and shuts the door.


	6. Under the Bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid visits Midgar, and gets into trouble when he returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm howling at this one. Enjoy, my lovelies~!
> 
> Non-explicit almost sexual content.

Cid arrives at Midgar not long before lunchtime; it takes a bit longer to wrangle the chocobo in the direction he wants it to go than he would have thought it would, and he wonders, as he dismounts and hands the reins to one of the kids running the stables just outside the city walls, alongside a handful of gil for the job, whether it was trying to tell him something. His mother would preach that chocobos were more intelligent than they let on, and Aerith would tell him that it was the planet trying to give him a sign, and he’d have to ignore both of them if he ever wanted a peaceful morning again.

So he chooses to ignore what they’d have said, had he asked them, which he didn’t, because he’s learnt that lesson several times over, and he hikes the bag on his shoulder and off he marches into the city.

Midgar isn’t a place he enjoys being on even the kindest of days. It’s busy and noisy and full of people, and the people in the town are enough for him, when he wants to deal with them. The less people the better. The fact that Shera, in barely a fortnight, has managed to carve out a space in his general vicinity that feels empty when she isn’t in it strikes him as – as –

Well, he’d have to think about it, and Cid Highwind is an earl, not a philosopher.

That means he has money, nothing important to spend it on, and time to waste.

His first stop is the modiste under the shadow of the walled gardens, where he won’t be asked questions about why he’s ordering a dress, and then he can –

Actually no, his first stop is some blocks away, because he can acknowledge that he is a sensible enough man when it comes to fashion for himself, but he has little understanding, care, or attention to afford to women’s fashion. Knowing that he needs sensible advice, he makes his way past the walled gardens and into the next sector, because that’s just how the bloody city was built, in sections that sprang up overnight, it seems like, and he has no fucking idea why they thought building in sections was a good idea. Just spread out like a normal fucking town.

He huffs at himself; Shera and her disordered, messy thought processes, where she had twelve thoughts instead of one, have clearly started rubbing off on him.

A sure sign he spends too much time pretending to doze in the Wutai Room instead of doing his job. Not that he really has much of a job, the town practically runs itself, and the prince doesn’t seem to want much more to do with him than to irritate him by sending his cronies on a quarterly basis.

Miss Lockhart, despite her clear lack of common sense, is a very fashionable sort of lass, and he figures she would be the one to ask about a gown. He can trust her discretion because Planet knows she’s covered for some of his wilder idiocies.

She’s not in when he arrives at the tea shop, which is a shame, but he’s in no hurry. Her – well, truth be told, he’s not entirely sure what the kid is to her, but _friend_ seems something of an underestimation – is all but cowering behind the counter, because customer service is not his strength. But he does clean the counter very well, which Cid supposes he should expect, given than he’s done it three times in the time it took Cid to walk past the window, through the door and to the counter.

‘She not here?’ he asks, by way of greeting, and the kid wrinkles his nose.

‘No,’ he replies, and looks for any specks of dust he might have missed. Cid can see a ring of it underneath one of the raised vases, but he thinks better than to say it. ‘She’s just out running an errand for Barret, she’ll be back soon.’

Cid leans on the counter, and ignores the eyeballs boring into the back of his head. He’s used to it by now; an Earl has no business gracing such a small establishment with his presence, and his familiarity with the proprietors knows no decency, but it’ll bring business. If it’s good enough for the Earl of Rakheim, it’s good enough for the rest of Sector Seven. Which is a stupid name for what basically amounts to an independent borough within the city.

‘Didn’t think she was the type to run errands,’ he says.

Cloud fidgets, fussing with the cloth in his hands before tossing it back to the sink. ‘Marlene’s sick,’ he explains, ‘but Barret’s been out in Kalm, prospecting, so he wanted Tifa to make sure she’s alright.’

Cid feels his eyebrows raise; he’s not one to comment upon others’ methods of parenting, what with his own lack of children, and lack of desire for any, but leaving a small child alone when she’s ill seems like a terrible oversight.

‘Oh,’ he says, because that’s about all he can say. Then he digs into his jacket pocket for some gil and adds, ‘don’t suppose I can get a brew while I wait?’

Cid Highwind, master of eloquence.

Cloud takes the coins and turns back towards the stove so that he can heat the kettle, and Cid surveys the tea shop. It’s been a while since he’s last visited, and he knows that Miss Lockhart will refuse any money he attempts to give her to get workmen in to tidy it up. But his presence seems to have made some impact, given the new tablecloths and the matching china.

‘I suppose Miss Gainsborough hasn’t been by lately,’ he says, and Cloud snorts.

‘Can you tell?’ he asks, ‘she’s been busy at the estate, by the sounds of her, and Zack said she’s been working on the cottage, too.’

‘She’s been a right pain for my gardener,’ Cid tells him, and folds his arms, watches a couple try not to be too obvious about their amorous intentions, what with the lady’s chaperone two tables away, glaring daggers at the chap. ‘But she’s making headway on the last patch. Something about vegetables, she said.’

‘Zack said something like that,’ Cloud nods, and clatters about as he collects a cup and saucer. ‘She thinks it’s a waste of space, and it would make things easier for everyone else.’

‘Sounds about right. You’ll have to tell him to try and reign her in, so she doesn’t make my gardener quit. Like fuck am I doing it.’

‘Oh,’ comes a snort from behind him, ‘because you’re so terribly busy with your Earl business.’

He grins for half a second before pulling his expression back to something neutral and vaguely grumpy. ‘Well,’ he snorts back, glancing over his shoulder to find Miss Lockhart standing with her hands on her hips, ‘it’s a busy business, being an Earl. There’s a lot of things I have to do on a daily basis.’

Miss Lockhart brushes past him to get behind the counter and relive Cloud of the unfortunate mess he’s making of the tea leaves. ‘Like what?’ she asks, her eyebrow raised, ‘terrifying my staff?’

‘He shouldn’t be terrified of me at this point,’ Cid argues, and accepts the cup Miss Lockhart hands him. ‘He’s had enough practice now, surely.’

Cloud has disappeared into the backroom, and Miss Lockhart looks at the door fondly before turning back to Cid.

‘You have to go easy on him, he’s still coming to terms with all that happened.’

Cid snorts but nods his head enough to tell her that he’s behaving himself.

For a minute or two, they’re quiet, Miss Lockhart fussing with the boxes of tea leaves and sugar and coffee grounds, and Cid sipping at the tea; a little over-brewed, but that’s not the kid’s fault, he’s never really had to make the tea before.

‘What brings you this way?’ Miss Lockhart asks eventually, and Cid hums.

‘Need a favour,’ he says, ‘you got a half-hour?’

‘Zack usually stops by around this time,’ she says, ‘I’ll get him to take over. It’ll do Cloud good, anyway. Why?’

Cid reaches down to pick up the bag and pass it across.

‘I have a guest,’ he says, ‘at the house. She’ll be with us for a while, but when I picked her up, she was in that.’

Miss Lockhart’s eyebrows furrow. ‘Aerith said you were being really quiet about something going on in the house, not like yourself, and she thought – wait, you said picked up. You don’t mean literally?’

Cid downs the last of the cup, shudders at the dregs of tea leaves hitting the back of his throat and puts the cup down. ‘Pretty literally,’ he admits, ‘found her in the woods, in the middle of the fucking night. Escaped a party with a suitor and decided the woods was the best place to go, instead of going home. Sprained her ankle, and I’m pretty sure she broke it last night, pissing about trying to be clever.’

Miss Lockhart has the bag half open and just stops to stare at him, open-mouthed.

‘You have a woman in your house,’ she repeats, in the vague monotonous voice of one who can’t quite believe the bullshit they’re hearing, ‘and she is _injured_.’

‘Yes, and she was wearing that fucking thing. I wanted to.’ He pauses, feels heat in his ears, and draws himself up to his full height, which isn’t nearly as impressive as it could have been. ‘I thought it might make her feel better to have a better dress.’

Miss Lockhart draws the offending item from the bag and wrinkles her nose. It looks worse in daylight, and worse still from the dried in mud and torn lace, but the colour of the yellow, where it’s still yellow anyway, isn’t the worst shade he’s ever seen.

‘This is,’ Miss Lockhart starts, and Cid nods.

‘I know,’ he replies.

‘She wore this to a party?’ Miss Lockhart checks.

‘To meet a suitor,’ he tells her.

‘To meet a suitor,’ Miss Lockhart echoes sadly.

She stares at the dress for another minute, and then looks up at him.

‘And you’re getting another one made for her?’

‘Not like that fucking thing, no,’ Cid replies, ‘something nice. But I want your help to make sure it’s nice.’

Something peculiar happens to Miss Lockhart’s face, something twitchy and it’s almost amused, but Cid wrinkles his nose at her.

‘Not a fucking word,’ he says, ‘or I’ll tell Cloud you’re up to no good.’

She snorts, tosses a loose strand of hair from her face. ‘He knows I’m always up to no good.’

Bold of her to say, when she has done exactly three things wrong in her life, but that’s why Cid likes her.

‘You’ll help?’

‘I’ll offer advice you can ignore,’ she assures him, which is basically as far as it would go anyway.

* * *

They arrive at the modiste in good enough time, and he’s as horrified by the creation Shera’s mother had forced her into as Miss Lockhart had been.

‘This is a traumatic event,’ he says, and Cid would disagree, but he can’t imagine having to try to win someone’s affections in something that doesn’t fit properly and is all around quite hideous.

‘I want a prettier dress,’ Cid informs him, and the modiste nods, fetches the fashion plates for him to peruse.

‘It will be harder,’ he admits as he hands them to Miss Lockhart, who begins to rifle through them, ‘without the intended recipient to model it.’

‘You can use the dress for measurements?’ Cid asks, and hates that he’s asking.

‘Of course, I am not a novice. It fits her?’

‘It’s – not well,’ Cid admits. ‘It was a little loose, around the.’ He gestures vaguely at his chest, because he remembers it draping. ‘But not enough to really notice.’

‘And yet you noticed.’

He ignores Miss Lockhart’s astute observation and looks at the modiste.

‘She could – would it be – inappropriate – to have an entire outfit made?’

The modiste plays dumb, because he has clearly sensed weakness and Cid hates him for it.

‘You mean a shawl or an overcoat? It would not be hard, these things are made to be shapeless.’

Cid clears his throat. ‘No, I meant. I thought – as the damage to the dress went – beneath – the whole outfit might – be nice.’

He can feel heat in his ears and his cheeks and his neck, and he hates it. The modiste grins at him. Miss Lockhart chuckles into her collar as she turns over a plate to peruse the back.

‘You mean her underthings?’ the modiste asks, ‘drawers and chemise and corset?’

‘I’ve seen all-in-ones,’ Miss Lockhart offers, ‘very frilly things, with lace and ribbons. Is she a very frilly girl?’

Cid hates her and would stamp on her toes if he weren’t afraid of breaking them.

‘No,’ he admits, ‘she’s quite practical.’

Taking pity on him, the modiste says, ‘depending on the dress you select, the corset, chemise and drawers may be both advisable and simple enough. I’ll leave you to look.’

Cid grumbles and fiddles with his cigarettes as they look over the fashion plates. He doesn’t light one, because he’s not entirely a savage, but he fiddles, just so he can have something in his hands.

‘None of them are the right colour,’ he hisses, and Miss Lockhart snorts.

‘You can change the colour; you’ll have to choose the fabrics you want it made of. This one’s nice.’

Cid despairs; it’s a hideous thing with a long train and lots of beading. This is unfair, perhaps, because it’s a very pretty dress, but it’s very intricate and Shera is clumsy enough with no clothes on, never mind something with a foot-long train.

‘No,’ he says, ‘no.’

So they keep on looking. He’s beginning to despair and think nothing will look good or right when Miss Lockhart turns a plate and he slams his hand on it.

‘That one,’ he says, before she’s done flinching.

It’s perfect; in the plate, it’s a cream or champagne sort of colour, neutral and clean, but he can imagine it in a soft yellow, a golden sort of colour. It’s to the floor without a train, in two layers, a solid, plain fabric with a pretty draped lace over the top, drawing over the shoulders and falling around the waist with a wide band around the middle to hold it. It’s edged with flowers and there’s no flounce or frivolity about it. It’s plain, and simple, and subtly delicate. Practical without being boring. Shera would struggle to trip in it by the length on the model, and with a pretty necklace or a tiara and some long gloves, he thinks she’d be very pretty indeed.

He would envy her suitor, that’s for sure.

Heaving a breath, because the thought of her going back to her suitor, and him being entranced by the beauty before him, makes him want to – to – throw up or punch something or otherwise just scream, he jabs his finger on the plate.

‘This one,’ he says, and looks at Miss Lockhart for confirmation.

‘Yes,’ she says, a little bewildered at his passion. ‘It’s very nice. Simple.’

‘She’s a simple girl,’ he says, and then frowns at himself.

Shera, he’s learnt, is far from simple. She’s very complicated, as girls go. But she is practical, and the less opportunity for further injury he can present her, the better.

Miss Lockhart goes to discuss the dress with the modiste, who comes back to get Cid’s opinion on fabrics. He chooses the nicest shade of gold that he can find from the selection, and lets Miss Lockhart decide on the suitable lace and ribbon to go with it, only choosing from the options she gives him, and then it’s done and decided and Cid hands over the appropriate amount of gil.

‘I will have the right chemise and drawers made up for her,’ the modiste says, and Cid nods.

‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘you will have it delivered to the house?’

‘Of course, My Lord,’ the modiste nods, ‘within the fortnight.’

They take their leave, and Miss Lockhart rounds on him.

‘You like her!’ she exclaims, jabbing a finger into his chest.

‘Of course I fucking like her, I wouldn’t have her in the house otherwise, fuck sake.’

‘No!’ Miss Lockhart protests, stomping after him as he stomps off and lights a cigarette. She wafts a hand in front of her face and elbows him. So uncouth. ‘No, you _like_ her. Don’t tell me you’re going to ruin her reputation, Cid, for Planet’s sake.’

Cid throws his hands in the air, and nearly swallows his cigarette.

‘Fuck off!’ he crows. ‘I ain’t doing _shit_. She’s injured, a pretty dress will make her feel better. That’s all.’

‘That’s _all_?’ Miss Lockhart crows back, and then makes a strangled noise. ‘I’ll talk to Aerith about this!’

‘Talk to her all you fucking like, I’ll ban her from the fucking house!’

This is a lie; Cid has no intention of banning Aerith from the house at all, and no power to regardless.

She’ll just jump the gate.

They stomp off in stony silence for several long moments, and then Cid huffs.

‘Sorry,’ he grunts, which is the best Miss Lockhart will get.

‘It’s okay,’ Miss Lockhart replies, and then, ‘sorry for pushing it. If you say she’s just a guest, I believe you. Where are you going now?’

Cid hesitates, and Miss Lockhart’s grin returns. A shit-eating one, because she’s too emotionally intelligent for his liking.

‘What are you buying her now?’ she asks, coy.

Cid tries not to answer, but it’s very obvious which direction he’s heading, and he tells her to fuck off.

‘I don’t need your help,’ he tells her, ‘I can manage from here.’

Miss Lockhart could give him shit for it, but instead she accepts defeat with grace, and tells him to stop by again before he goes, and she’ll make him a cup of tea this time.

And then he’s alone again, just like that. He continues on his path towards the jewellers, because he thinks a tiara is necessary to accompany the dress, but he has his mother’s good taste on his side for this one. Fashion, he needs help with, jewellery, not so much. Like the dress, he tells the jeweller when he gets inside, it needs to be understated. Something simple and pretty but not so delicate that it would be easily broken or get tangled into hair.

‘Why would it get tangled into hair?’ the jeweller asks, and Cid shrugs.

‘These things happen,’ he says, and thinks about the mess Shera’s hair had been in when he found her.

After a drawn-out debate about the cost of the thing, which Cid thinks had been vastly overestimated, he leaves and returns to Miss Lockhart’s tea shop. It’s barely the early afternoon, he’ll have plenty of time to return home before dinner.

And hopefully, Palmer will be fucking gone.

* * *

Shera wakes late in the morning, and her ankle immediately startles her into a far more wakeful state than she’d wanted to be in. She vaguely remembers, in a hazy sort of way hidden beneath the throbbing, burning, screaming agony that emanates from her ankle, warm hands on her elbows, the softness of breath against her neck, the warmth of Lord Highwind’s voice as he pulled her to her feet and – and –

And –

Undressed her.

He got her undressed and got her into bed, and he’d – he’d –

He hadn’t kissed her. She’s sure of that. Nothing untoward had happened at all.

She hisses between her teeth at the pain in her ankle, and looks across to where the bell is. If she were the sort, she’d swear. But instead, she makes a pained little noise in the back of her throat that could be a scream, and nearly knocks a cup off the table beside the bed, clearly set there while she was still asleep. No doubt the maids had brought her tea, found her still asleep, and left it there for when she woke. No doubt, also, that it was now cold.

Still, she was going to have to ring for assistance; she wouldn’t want to scream the house down to get attention in the event Lord Palmer was still here. Lord Highwind would only be more cross with her than he already was, and it wouldn’t help her any to create a fuss.

Sitting up isn’t so bad, but it takes some effort to even swing her leg off the bed and attempt to get to her feet. It’s blacker than ever, and swollen, and she doesn’t dare put any weight on it. It makes hobbling across to the bell harder than it really has any right to be, because she doesn’t know where the cane is.

After pulling on the rope, she collapses into the nearest chair, and pulls her ankle into her lap. It aches like a thousand daggers the entire time, and she curses herself for being so foolish.

‘He said,’ she tells her ankle, ‘he _said_ to stay put. You need to learn to listen.’

Her mother would have said the same thing to her, so she supposes it’s a fair chastisement, even though she knows that there’s far more to her own foolishness than that.

Mrs Wright comes through the door some few minutes later, and she tuts at the way Shera’s sat on the chair, though she does have a fresh tray of tea in her hands, so Shera doesn’t mind the derision too much.

‘Miss Crescent,’ she says, and shuts the door with a gentle tap of her heel, crossing to set the tray down. ‘You should be in bed.’

‘I wouldn’t have been able to ring the bell otherwise,’ Shera assures her, and obligingly lifts her ankle for her to take.

Mrs Wright drops it gently into her lap and turns it this way and that, her fingertips very warm against the sore, inflamed skin.

‘You certainly did a number on yourself. Have you kept it elevated?’

She nods, and crosses her arms over her chemise, as though the housekeeper hasn’t seen her naked already.

‘Yes, I – Lord Highwind helped me – that is –’

Mrs Wright tuts, and presses her thumbs into the arch of Shera’s sole, making her wince.

‘Lord Highwind,’ she repeats with a sigh. ‘I’m sure he helped you plenty.’

Shera feels a flush in her ears and down her neck but straightens her shoulders anyway.

‘Nothing happened,’ she says, ‘he merely – he helped me to – I couldn’t sleep fully dressed, and he made sure my ankle was raised before he left. I think. I was – very tired.’

‘I’m sure. Drink your tea and eat your toast, and I’ll see to a bath, then we’ll worry about your ankle. Some of that potion from your father and a bandage, and some rest. It’s not broken.’

‘No,’ Shera agrees, ‘I thought as much. Not enough pain.’

She wiggles her toes as Mrs Wright swaps her lap for the seat of the chair. While Mrs Wright goes to the bathroom, Shera busies herself with the tea and toast. When the housekeeper returns, she glances up from her cup.

‘Where is Lord Highwind?’ she asks, for he’s usually prevailed himself upon her by now.

Mrs Wright shakes her head. ‘Haven’t the foggiest, Miss,’ she admits. ‘He was gone before breakfast, and not a word of it to John. It’s his way. He’ll be back before dinner; he’s never gone for an entire day.’

Shera frowns at her tea. The aching hole in her chest surprises her; she’d grown used to his visits of a morning, the time he spent pretending to sleep and the time she spent watching him over the top of a book or newspaper or sketch of the view from the window.

‘Oh,’ she says, because she needs to say something with the way Mrs Wright is frowning at her in turn.

‘Were you – expecting him?’ Mrs Wright asks.

‘No,’ Shera replies, with a wrinkle of her nose. ‘No, I just. I thought.’

She doesn’t know what she thought. That maybe Lord Highwind felt something for her? That perhaps he’d have liked to undress her further than he had? That he had been so close to kissing her in the library that part of her desperately wished he would make good on the way he stared at her?

She’s being foolish, and she knows it. Lord Highwind is just that, a _Lord_ , a bloody _Earl_ , and she is the daughter of a middle-class doctor, with nothing to her name except her own clumsiness.

Planet below, it was a miracle he hadn’t turned her out of the house.

‘You thought?’ Mrs Wright asks.

Shera shakes her head. ‘Nothing.’

They hover in aching silence for a few moments, and then Mrs Wright heaves a breath.

‘Come,’ she says, ‘I’ll help you into the bath, and then you can rest some more. I’m sure Lord Highwind will expect you at dinner.’

Shera hates how quickly her gaze jumps up.

‘You believe so?’ she asks, and Mrs Wright hums.

‘Has he given you any impression otherwise?’ she asks.

Shera supposes he hasn’t, but that doesn’t mean that Lord Highwind doesn’t intend to have her carted off back home. After her behaviour yesterday, she supposes it’s the least she deserves.

‘Has his visitor gone?’ she asks instead, as Mrs Wright helps her to her feet, bracing her arm so that Shera can keep weight off her ankle.

‘Lord Palmer? Yes, a half-hour ago. No doubt that was part of why Lord Highwind left so early, he hates the Prince’s men coming and going in the house.’

Shera nods; she can believe that. Lord Highwind is the kind of man who keeps himself to himself.

Mrs Wright deposits her in the bath, and leaves her to it, saying something over her shoulder about fetching her fresh toast or the like. Shera ignores her for the most part, staring at her fingers in the water, and thinking about how she is likely to see Lord Highwind for the last time tonight. She would not blame him if he sent her home, and she cannot believe she hadn’t thought of his response to her foolishness sooner.

She’s made her bed, she reasons with a downturn to her mouth. She must lie in it, however uncomfortable it is.

* * *

Cid comes bounding up the steps just in time to hear the dinner gong.

‘Don’t fuckin’ tell me he’s still here,’ he barks to John, who comes to take his coat.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, My Lord,’ John replies, in the kind of imperious tone he only takes when Cid is being especially ridiculous. ‘He left not long after breakfast. Something about heading on to Nibelheim.’

Fuck knows what he wanted in Nibelheim besides an argument.

‘I don’t have time to change,’ he admits, looks at himself, dusty and his boots splashed with mud.

‘Your mother will not mind,’ John assures him.

‘Has – Mrs Wright has seen to our guest?’ Cid asks him then, hates the pitch and shake in the back of his throat.

‘Miss Crescent? I believe so. She was unsure how best to get her downstairs for dinner.’

‘I need to apologise to her,’ Cid says, and John freezes, coat halfway across his arm.

‘Sir?’ he asks, but Cid is already tossing his cap onto a stool and heading for the stairs, taking them three at a time.

The Wutai Room door is closed, but a short rap of his knuckles gets him bid entrance.

‘Shera,’ he says, bursting through the door, only to find her perched on the edge of the bed, completely naked and cradling her ankle.

‘My Lord!’ she cries, toppling backwards in an attempt to grab a blanket to cover herself, but failing miserably.

At the same time, he yells, ‘fuck me!’ and slams the door behind him, trapping him in the room with her.

The slam of the door rings through the room for a moment, and then the air settles, stills, and it falls silent in such a way that he can almost hear the hammering of her heart. It has to be hers, because his isn’t pounding in his chest, not at all. No. Not in the least. He is completely calm.

‘Shera,’ he croaks, and she makes a muffled noise from beneath the blanket she’s drawn over herself, which covers almost everything.

‘Yes, My Lord?’ she squeaks back.

‘You need to.’ He clears his throat, tries again. ‘You need to move the blanket. I can see your – well – I can’t see your face.’

She makes a noise that could be a scream between clenched teeth, and yanks the blanket too far, so now he can see her breasts, but not her –

Well –

It’s –

Is it an improvement?

The ache in hips tells him no. But that could be a yes, too. She does have very nice breasts. Pert and her chest is heaving with the weight of her breath so they’re doing all sorts of fun things for how small they are and staring at a lady’s breasts is a sure way to get yourself fucking _shot_.

His mother would kill him.

It would be worth it, he thinks.

Shera stares at the ceiling, her face crimson, even from across the room.

‘Can I help you?’ she manages to hiss around the strain in her neck from trying not to move.

‘I thought I might help you to dinner,’ he says, and then, before he can stop himself, he makes some quip about how, really, he feels like helping himself to dessert first, and he hopes to whatever is beyond this life that it is not immortalised to haunt him there.

It’s going to haunt him enough in this life.

Shera lies there for a moment, and then shifts, subtly. Her elbow moves, and he watches the way her back curves as she sits herself upright, blanket pooling in her lap and leaving her completely naked to his gaze from the waist up, and he hates himself for looking.

‘Dessert?’ she echoes, crease between her brows.

He can feel heat in his face, and whirls on his heel, faces the wall.

‘Fuck sake, forget I said a fucking word,’ he barks. ‘That was the worst thing I have ever said.’

‘Dessert,’ she repeats, as if mostly for herself.

He’s about to turn back, despite the heat he can feel in his – well. He’s about to turn back and explain _exactly_ what he means when there’s another knock at the door.

‘Miss Crescent?’

He does whirl at that, and they stare at each other. It’s only a maid. But only is still too much of an emphasis.

‘I cannot be in here,’ he whispers, and she flaps her hands.

‘Get under the bed,’ she whispers back, jabs a finger in the direction, but she’s pointing more at her lap than the space beneath the mattress, which is _not_ helping him at all.

Cid is about to remind her that he’s an Earl, and Earls do not hide under beds of women whose bedchambers they should not be in, but the maid is knocking again, and he does as he’s told. Shera clears her throat as he bangs an elbow on the frame.

‘Yes?’

The door creaks open, and Cid can see the maid’s feet, but nothing else.

‘Is everything alright?’ she asks, ‘I thought I heard you cry out?’

Shera chokes on her breath, and Cid snorts.

Clearing her throat, she says, ‘yes, yes, I thought I saw something, but it was just a shadow on the wall, was all. Do you – do you know when Mrs Wright will be back?’

‘She’s just fetching your dress, Miss,’ the maid replies, ‘she wanted to be sure it was presentable, as – one of the footmen came down to say that they’ve heard Lord Highwind’s back.’

‘Oh,’ Shera says, pleasantly enough, and Cid admires the audacity. She’s a terrible liar, but she’s giving it a go. ‘That’s nice to hear.’

The maid’s ankles bend, and the door closes. Cid gives it five seconds, and then scrambles out from under the bed. Shera’s drawn the blanket up to her breasts now, though the redness in her cheeks is – is –

Well, quite fucking honestly, it’s ravishing.

He’s been aroused before, of course he has, he’s seen pretty ladies. But the weight of his want for her, the weight of how much he wants to yank that blanket away from her and take her to pieces.

‘I need to go,’ he says, jams his hands in his pockets, though it does little but draw attention to the – problem.

Shera’s eyes follow the movement, and then her eyebrows climb. She looks – he’s not entirely sure, to be honest. She looks peculiarly – she looks –

‘Yes,’ she agrees, with a nod. ‘I think you’d better.’

He swallows thickly; she’s biting her lip, and fuck _sake_ , he wants to do that for her.

It’s been little more than weeks. There’s no reason to feel so – so – to have his blood so hot in his veins. No reason at all. She’s just a woman. Just an ordinary woman. She’s not even that interesting!

She’s just. Sort of there. On his periphery. And she’s nice, and funny, and she’s got this way about her that makes him want to take her to pieces, just to see what she’d do with this new information.

He swallows, and turns towards the door.

‘Lord Highwind,’ she starts, and he makes a noise almost like a snarl.

‘Cid,’ he tells her. ‘My name is Cid.’

He hears her lick her lips, take a breath, and the ache in his chest is nothing compared to the one between his legs.

‘Cid,’ she says, and his mouth goes so fucking dry it’s a wonder he doesn’t choke.

He turns back, mouth half-open to tell her exactly what he wants to do to her when the door knocks again.

‘For fuck sake,’ he mouths, and Shera gives him an imploring look.

He rounds the bed and ducks behind it just as she calls for entrance.

It’s Mrs Wright, with Shera’s things over her arm, and Cid smashes his foot on the leg of the bed as he does his best to crawl back under. It’s very difficult, considering his – discomfort.

‘Mrs Wright,’ Shera says, too loudly, as though it could possibly cover the noise when it’s already happened.

‘Yes?’ the housekeeper replies.

Shera doesn’t have anything to say to that, and the next half hour is the most awkward of Cid’s life. Lying under the bed, trying desperately not to think about how he could have, if he’d had more gumption and less sense, ruined his guest’s reputation not two feet above his head, Cid listens to them chatter as Mrs Wright helps her get ready, and it becomes increasingly obvious, the longer the housekeeper takes over things that shouldn’t take any length of time at all, that she knows he’s here.

She can’t possibly know he’s here, because she can’t possibly know that he’s back, unless she’d happened upon her husband, who’d informed her of his intentions to take Shera to dinner.

Cursing himself silently, Cid tries to will away the whole unfortunate business. His britches, Shera’s existence, Mrs Wright’s poor timing. The whole lot of it. He mostly manages to succeed with the first, though not quite in the way he supposes he’d like.

Fuck sake.

‘There,’ Mrs Wright says after an entire revolution of this fucking rock has passed. ‘I think you’re about ready. Just need your chaperone now.’

Shera hums happily enough, and Cid can’t see her, but he imagines she’s preening in the mirror. She isn’t a preening sort, but it was the kind of noise he expects a preening lass might make.

Nothing else is said, and there’s no movement, and the silence drags. It becomes very obvious that Mrs Wright is waiting for him to arrive. But he can’t arrive, because he’s already fucking here.

‘Fuck off,’ he mouths to the slats above his head. ‘Just fuck off.’

‘Oh,’ Shera says, when she realises what’s happening. ‘A maid came by just before you did, looking for you. She wanted your help with one of the tablecloths.’

It’s an awful lie, and obvious as the blush on her chest when Cid had stood there and gawked like a fucking teenager.

‘She did?’ Mrs Wright asks, playing along, because she’s only sort of evil.

‘Mm,’ Shera says, ‘she said it was quite urgent.’

Mrs Wright snorts, and gets to her feet with a groan. ‘I’ll trust you to wait until Lord Highwind comes to take you.’

Cid _does_ choke at that. Shera coughs. Loudly.

Mrs Wright hums and then he sees her feet pass the bed. The door clicks open, and shut, and silence reigns for one, five, ten seconds.

‘You’re safe to come out,’ Shera whispers.

‘Fuck _me_ ,’ Cid gasps, wriggling out from under the bed, dustier than ever and not a little livid. ‘She fucking _knew_ I was in here.’

Shera is very pretty, the way she’s always very pretty, in a plain blue dress with a square neck. He’s sure it’s supposed to be for daywear, not dinner, but it’s nice all the same. Her hair’s braided up away from her neck, and though there are no jewels around it, it’s a pleasant neck all the same. For a moment, he forgets what he was going to say, caught up in the want to kiss that neck, and then he shakes himself out. He’s getting ridiculous.

Red blood or not, he has better control of himself than this.

‘She can’t have known,’ Shera says, and Cid shakes his head.

‘No, no, she knew. I know her well enough to know when she’s teasing me.’

Shera looks aghast that a staff member might tease their employer, but Cid shrugs it off and crosses the room to scoop her up. She settles into his arms, her fingertips playing with the hair at the nape of his neck in a way that threatens to make him lose his knees.

‘If you want to make it to dinner, I suggest you keep your hands to yourself.’

It comes off far more threatening than he intended it to, and her hands snap back into her ribs, fiddling with her fingers and staring at the floor as they leave the room and make for the stairs.

Once in the dining room, he frowns to find his mother not present. He sets Shera in her chair, and takes his own seat, looks across at John.

‘My mother?’ he asks.

‘She has a headache, My Lord,’ he replies with an incline of his head, ‘so she is having her dinner in her chambers. She sends her apologies.’

A headache, Cid snorts, and turns his gaze to Shera, who whips hers from him faster than he thought eyes could move.

‘Just us,’ he says, and her lashes flutter, her cheeks darken.

‘Just us,’ she echoes, soft enough that he almost doesn’t hear it.

But he does see the edge of a smile on her lips.

* * *

As he’s carrying her back to the Wutai Room, he feels the air shift, momentarily. Something heavy hangs between them, and he’s not entirely sure what to do about it. Oh he knows what to _do_ about it, but he doesn’t know if that’s what he’s _meant_ to do.

‘Shera,’ he says, and she looks up at him.

Fuck, but her eyes are so beautiful, sunlight in the trees, brown and gold with flecks of green, and he could commission a master and he’d never paint such beautiful combinations of colour.

‘Yes?’ she asks.

He almost asks her if she needs to return home, if she would mind terribly staying here forever, if she’d be opposed to leaving the Wutai Room and moving into the Master Bedroom he occupies, but instead he swallows the words down.

‘I thought we might – if you wanted – we might – fuck it – thought we’d go out in the car, tomorrow, if you wanted to.’

‘The car?’

‘Just a fucking idea,’ he grunts, and she seems taken aback by his sudden about-face.

‘I didn’t say no,’ she tells him, and he can feel her searching his face for an answer to a question she’s not asked.

But he doesn’t know how to answer it, so he hopes she finds it.

‘I’d like that,’ she whispers eventually, and he reaches the door to the Wutai Room.

A maid is already waiting inside for her. A shame. He’d have liked to help her undress. The way her fingers linger on his arm as he sets her down on the bed makes him think she feels the same.

He’s not ashamed of what he does when he gets back to his chamber, because he is just a man, and he’s – he’s – well, fuck him sideways, but he’s falling in love with her, and that comes with.

Well.

That comes with a whole heap of fucking trouble.


End file.
